Harry and the Mystery Egg
by Montenya of the Fairies
Summary: [On Hiatus] Having finally arrived in the Okoku region, Harry and Bolt begin their journey to find home. But the world of Pokemon may not be the utopia Harry had imagined. Forget finding home- will he even survive? (Harry and the First Pokemon Sequel)
1. Harry and the Massive Shadow

Harry sat up suddenly, jerking awake from a deep sleep. Beside him Bolt squirmed away from Harry's movement, pushing his face further into the dirt. Where were they? What time was it? Why—

Just as instantaneously as he woke up Harry remembered the events of the past day. He remembered his teacher's lesson, he remembered Dudley's reaction to it, and he remembered his mad sprint out of Little Whinging with Bolt by his side. As his brain fully woke up so too did his body. His legs screamed in agony, and he could feel the scratches that were carved all over his body by the barbed wire fence as if they were made of fire.

He forced himself to take off the backpack he'd slept on the night before, aching, and robotically sifted through the pockets until he found the contents of Aunt Petunia's medicine cabinet. He found one that said pain relief and took four at once in a dry swallow. His hacking woke up Bolt, who startled and looked around for danger.

About an hour or so later they were on their way. Harry, despite knowing that rations were limited, had allowed himself and Bolt a full breakfast (or, based on the position of the sun, lunch) before setting out. They'd gorged themselves on berries of all shapes and sizes and a full water bottle each as Harry wrapped gauze over his wounds. Now, with full stomachs and somewhat healed bodies, they were beginning their journey down the road, with no idea how long it would take to get there, or, for that matter, where 'there' was.

"We're free, Bolt. That's what's important." The boy told his friend as it whimpered slightly from the bruises on the pads of its feet. Harry glanced back at the fence and as he stared at the wheat fields behind it he felt the full weight of Dudley, Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and all the other residents and customs of Little Whinging lift off of him. He grinned, uncontrolled and broad, for the first time in his memory. "We're free."

It took two days for the scenery to change. Prior to that the sparse trees scattered in dirt and clover on either side of the chipped and faded grey asphalt road had begun to blend together in the eyes of the boy, seemingly as similar as the houses of Little Whinging. The pair had survived as well as they could on what few resources Harry had managed to gather, and scrounged when it wasn't enough. Harry was never more thankful for delaying the trip as long as he had—in the intervening years he'd learned many survival tips, like how to start a fire or recognize edible plants, that became invaluable as he and Bolt went forward. Nonetheless, it was difficult for the two to go through the woods obviously outside of Little Whinging and still not see any Pokemon, and humans, any sign of non-plant life at all.

But, finally, just as he'd begun to despair his earlier decision to leave for all that it was necessary, Bolt saw something in the distance. He yelped from his position well ahead of Harry, at the very crest of a large and gently sloped hill that the road bent over, and darted back, nearly vibrating with happiness. He grabbed lightly at the bottom of one of Harry's pant legs and tried to tug the boy forward.

"All right, all right." Harry laughed. He picked up the pace, but Bolt wanted him to go still faster. Finally Harry got close enough and near enough that he could see it—there, far in the distance, was tall broad grass. It stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, a vibrant blatant green, and stood about the height of Harry's chest, just as had been described in the Okoku book. In front of it was a massive sign, just barely visible from his distance—"Okoku Region". Harry shouted and ran forward, with Bolt nipping at his heels, just as excited as Harry was.

As they neared the mass of green Harry slowed again. The road stopped here, fading into two dirt lines exactly the width of the average tire and evenly spaced apart, worn somewhat down from infrequent travel. Small shoots of grass had sprouted in the packed dirt, uncaring of the possible danger of a future car.

About five meters away from the meadow Harry stopped altogether. Bolt stopped beside him and cocked his head in confusion.

"What's… what do you… do you think… do you think we're near Pokemon?" Harry finally breathed out, trying to not be too eager. The idea of Pokemon had in some ways become his salvation—Bolt, his dreams, the book: they were all centered on Pokemon. The idea that he was close to more than one of them felt so surreal that he simply couldn't believe that he might actually meet another, not after all the good the first had brought.

Bolt moved forwards a few steps and started sniffing. Finally he turned to the left, staring straight at an otherwise unremarkable patch of grass. Just as Harry was about to ask what he scented the patch moved. Another second passed and then without warning a Rattata, mentioned in "Deadly Pokemon" as being harbingers of disease, darted out, headed straight for an acorn dropped from one of the trees. The second it grabbed the food it spun around and darted right back into the thick foliage. Harry laughed.

"Come on, Bolt! We've made it to Okoku!"

The two friends dove into the grass headfirst, ready for anything it could throw at them. It took the rest of the day until they'd crossed the first field of grass. They'd stumbled across wild Pokemon only a few times, but when the initially tense Pokemon saw Bolt they relaxed. While a number still wanted to fight, they also didn't chase Harry and Bolt when they took off to avoid battle.

It wasn't a perfect system, and Harry was sure that at least some of the Pokemon's behaviors were based off of something Bolt said or did that Harry didn't notice or simply couldn't interpret, but it worked. They stayed safe as they continued to venture deeper and deeper into Okoku territory. As the evening was beginning to change to dusk, though, that changed.

They'd just stumbled out of the grass into a small clearing just as the sun began to set. Harry, tired, had lain down and Bolt had curled up into a ball next to him. The little boy wrapped a protective hand around Bolt and closed his eyes, ready for a good night's sleep, when the tiny body next to him suddenly shifted and began to growl. Harry sat up, terrified that a large Pokemon had decided that the two were its next meal, or worse, that somehow the Little Whinging Police had found them all the way out here—a fear which had plagued him since they'd left his relative's house. He turned, fighting between the need to know and the want to not, and looked to where Bolt was staring. There, straight across the clearing, was a massive body, over two times larger than the grass to its back. The being was entirely shrouded in black: there wasn't enough sunlight for any features to be discerned. The mass moved towards Harry and the boy screamed, voice shrill and loud against the silence of the fading day.

Was this it? Was all his effort, his work, his struggles about to be made meaningless?

Was this the end?


	2. Harry and the Breadcrumbs

Harry couldn't catch his breath. It was completely unfair that someone as large as his pursuer could be as fast as they were, but there you go. Life wasn't fair. Harry and Bolt were rampaging through the grass, zigging and zagging wildly as Harry tried to lose his hunter. He knew that much from years of running away from Dudley. He also kept low, below the tops of the grass, but it didn't seem to matter what he did—the person behind him would not be deterred.

"Hey! Wait up! You're not supposed to be here! How old are you?" It—he—screamed. Harry tried to pick up his pace, but he couldn't go any faster. The man was closing in.

"Run, Bolt! Run!" Harry screamed as the man's giant arms closed around him. Bolt shook his head, growling and running headfirst into the man's legs.

"Whoa, there, little buddy! I'm not trying to hurt your owner!"

"Not—" Harry kicked the man's shin, but the grip didn't loosen. "His—" Harry kicked again, but it missed entirely. "Owner!" He kicked back with both feet, hitting the man's knees and trying to propel himself forward.

"Stop that!" The man shouted. "You'll hurt yourself! Here," The man readjusted his grip, now carrying Harry over his shoulder as one would a rolled up rug, "Let's just sit you down and see if we can't get this misunderstanding cleared up." With the hand that wasn't holding Harry in place he scooped up Bolt, before trudging back to the clearing, apparently oblivious to the two's desperate attempts to escape.

When he got back to the clearing he sat Harry back down and it only took three escape attempts until the boy abandoned the effort and sat still, holding Bolt protectively against his stomach. He glared distrustfully at the giant man, at least a head taller than anyone he'd met before, and dared to ask a question.

"You gonna make me go back to Little Whinging?" Harry didn't dare think about what might happen to Bolt in that instance.

"Blimey, you're from Little Whinging? Well, where'd you get this Shinx then?" The man asked, genuinely confused.

"My backyard." Harry said. The man laughed. Harry didn't.

"Oh! Oh, you were… well, I wonder how it got there. Still don't explain how you got out here though." The man said.

"Ran away."

"Why would you do that?" The man asked, apparently stunned. Harry raised an eyebrow and didn't answer. Given the Shinx in his lap, he didn't think he had to. After a few seconds the man didn't either.

"I don't really know what to do…" The man said in answer to Harry's earlier question. "By all rights I should pack you up and ship you home, but that's what I'd do if you were an Okoku resident. But I don't think anyone's run away from Little Whinging before. But then, no one's found a Pokemon in there either, and all of the residents like it that way. What's your name, anyway?" He asked.

"You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine." Harry snapped. The man laughed.

"Fair enough. My name's Hagrid. Rubeus Hagrid, fully."

"Harry."

"Harry what?"

"Harry Potter."

"Harry what?!"

"I just told you!"

"Blimey!"

"Blimey what?!" Harry asked, increasingly agitated with the man's—Hagrid's—behavior.

"What—you don't know? Your aunt and uncle were supposed to tell you." Hagrid said.

"You know my aunt and uncle?" Harry said, any modicum of trust for the man in front of him fleeing fast.

"Well, not personal-like, no, but I know that Dumbledore sent you there—wanted you to be raised by family, and all that. But the deal was you'd come back when you were eleven." Harry stared at Hagrid blankly. "…You didn't know any of that did you?"

"No. Who were my parents?" Harry asked.

"Well, they were Pokemon trainers in their youth—and darn good ones too. But when the war came, well, they fought. They're war heroes, Harry. What they did… what you did, the entire region will never be able to repay."

That was a lot to unpack. "Okay… look, this is all very interesting and new information, but that doesn't explain why I've never heard of you or why my aunt and uncle told me my parents died in a car crash while drunk. It's how I got my scar."

"What? No! That's not true! You got your scar after You-Know-Who attacked you!"

"Who?"

"Huh?"

"You said you know who, but I don't know who."

"Didn't your aunt and uncle tell you anything?" Hagrid asked plaintively, before sighing. "He was… he was a very bad man Harry. And he was the one that… that… you, know. Made you an orphan. Bad news him. But he's gone now." Hagrid sighed again before looking at his watch. "It's too late for me to get into touch with Dumbledore, so I guess I'll do that in the morning. Don't run away in your sleep, okay?"

Harry shrugged, which did not seem to reassure the man. He eyed Harry suspiciously, before pulling a ball—a pokeball!—out of his coat and pressing the button jutting from the side. The pokeball opened and a beam of light flashed outwards before coalescing into… into… well, it was definitely a Pokemon. It was blue and red and large and actually pretty ugly.

"Alright, Fang. We'll be camping here tonight. You're in charge of watching over us and making sure this little tike doesn't take off. Got it?"

The Pokemon whimpered but nodded, before bounding over to Hagrid and slobbering all over his face.

"Alright! Alright! I love you too! Now get to work!" Hagrid bellowed, laughing at his Pokemon's antics.

As the unknown Pokemon began its vigil the man, boy, and Shinx with it settled down for some rest. Just as Harry was beginning to nod off he turned to the large man beside him.

"You said no one runs away from Little Whinging. Why don't they?"

"Well, I suppose they're too scared." Hagrid mumbled back, obviously more asleep than Harry. " 'Cause, you know, Pokemon can be…" Hagrid broke off into a yawn. "Pokemon can be dangerous… especially if they're in the wrong hands." Hagrid stopped speaking, apparently finished, and a few seconds after let off what promised to be the first of many deep rumbling snores.

Harry stared at the sky, wondering if and when he'd meet a dangerous Pokemon, before he too fell asleep. Far above him the sunlight reflecting off of a reddish planet millions of miles away seemed to brighten unnaturally, almost winking at the little boy who had just closed his eyes.


	3. Harry and the Long Walk

Hagrid and Harry slowly hiked up a large cliff side, alone except for a small black and blue Pokemon nipping at Harry's heels and another, larger, blue and red Pokemon several meters ahead, having already crested the top of the crag. It was well past noon, but not yet time to set up camp, so the two humans and their two companions marched forward. Harry had asked why they weren't taking a car—perhaps an ATV, like the kind he'd ridden on when his uncle had been forced to take him along to take-your-child-to-work-day—but Hagrid was quick to say no. As he explained to Harry, despite Little Whinging's small size it actually contained the majority of the region's natural resources, and therefore controlled the price of certain commodities like gas quite closely. The cost of a gallon of gas within Little Whinging was a dollar. Outside of Little Whinging? $32. So, unfortunately, the only way Harry and Hagrid were going to get back to Okoku proper (where all the roads and towns and cities were) was by walking.

Two weeks had passed since Hagrid had caught Harry, and it had been twelve days since the burly man had managed to get enough of a signal to contact Dumbledore. While Harry wasn't completely sure of the content of the phone call, he was aware of the results: he wouldn't be sent back. Instead, he would go to Spoinkperl.

"Your parents went there, you know," Hagrid had explained—apparently the plan had always been for Harry to go there when he turned eleven, and given that it was May it would have only been a few months before he got picked up if he hadn't had run away. Hagrid has also explained, a bit admonishingly, that if Harry had waited it was likely he could have gone the distance in a car: there was a road to Little Whinging, but it was generally only used about twice a year, for the transport of materials. Still, Harry infinitely preferred the wilderness of Okoku to the dreary existence inside Little Whinging's fence, so he was very happy with how everything had fallen into place, ATV or no ATV.

Hagrid had explained many other things, too—the man was a veritable font of knowledge, and all Harry had to do was ask a question to get Hagrid to go on for hours, a habit that Harry latched onto like a lifeline in a sea of unknowns. It was in this way that Harry had become more acquainted with the overall structure of Spoinkperl, a school built centuries ago in order to teach as many children as possible how to safely battle Pokemon. Hagrid had started his explanation with the four houses.

Gryffindor was the one Hagrid detailed first. You were sent there if you battled using power, Hagrid explained. He had been a Gryffindor when he had attended Spoinkperl, he boasted—as had both of Harry's parents. "A great house with great people, Harry. Wonderful house, Gryffindor." And, apparently, Harry would sorted there too if you agreed with the "everyone" Hagrid had mentioned: "I mean, it's basically common knowledge, Harry. You're a shoe-in for sure." (Never mind that not one of them—not even Hagrid— had ever spoken to him about how he would want to battle.)

While Gryffindor was clearly Hagrid's favorite house the large man also had nothing particularly bad to say about Ravenclaw, who fought using knowledge, except that Ravenclaws always had their noses in books and never seemed to do well enough in battles to justify it (to Hagrid, at least. Harry would reserve judgement: he understood the call of knowledge too much to dismiss it so easily.)

Hagrid's generally kind attitude did not carry over to the latter two houses, however.

"Now, I suppose there's nothing wrong with them, but the Hufflepuffs… well, most people think they're duffers, you know? Officially, you're sorted there if you're unpredictable in your attacks, but… I mean, if you're bad at battling then of course you'd be unpredictable. I don't know, though, Professor Sprout's from Hufflepuff and she's strong enough, so I suppose there are exceptions." Harry… wasn't sure how to feel about that. A house for people who wouldn't succeed? On top of a house for those who didn't think and another for those who didn't win?

While Hagrid's views on the Hufflepuff house were certainly uncomplimentary, in comparison to what he said about the final house they were downright tame.

"Slytherins… bah. They say that they battle using cunning, but really that just means they're cheats. If they can find any way around the rules than that's what they'll do. You Know Who was a Slytherin, you know. Most criminals are. Avoid Slytherins, Harry. Nothing good would come from having them as your friends."

Harry took Hagrid's opinions on Slytherin with a grain of salt, just as he had with the other houses. While the man seemed nice enough, the boy knew better than to believe what people said without double checking—too many things Harry that had been told had turned out to be false for Harry to ever take someone's word. And a quarter of a school being cheats and criminals?

Harry had needed a change of topic by that point in the journey, and redirected Hagrid's attention to another unknown facet of Spoinkperl: classes.

"You'll only have six classes, Harry, because you're going to be a first year. Let's see, there's… Anatomy, which is taught by Professor McGonagall. Good lady, she is. Strict though. The class teaches you about the bodies of Pokemon—McGonagall gets real specific, too, so you'll know loads by the time you graduate.

Then there's… Exercise, with Kettleburn. That's a pretty simple class. It's just all about making your Pokemon stronger and the like. A lot of Pokemon don't like exercise, though. It's real tough, and Kettleburn is always trying new exercises that… well, they don't always work out, and he always tries them himself so… just don't be put off by what he looks like, okay? I promise he's a good teacher.

What else… oh! There's Sprout's class, Survival. That's a good class, I like it. It teaches you the basics of how to survive in the wilderness. Most kids don't like that class anymore—say it's no use in the modern world—but I still think it teaches some good skills.

Hm… Oh! There's also Training with Prof. Flitwick. That's where you teach your Pokemon new moves. It's a favorite of students—always has been.

And then there's Memorization. That's a tough class. There's two teachers: Binns and Snape. Binns is… well, you just sorta power through the classes you have with him, but Snape. Harry, you just got to remember that he don't mean anything by his words, okay? He just… gets a bit annoyed when students don't do well. You'll only have him once a week, anyhow, so I suppose it doesn't matter." Hagrid had drifted off, then, and they walked in silence for a bit until Harry's curiosity became too much.

"You missed one class, Hagrid."

"What?"

"You listed five, um… Memorization, Anatomy, Survival, Training and… Exercise. That's five."

"Oh! Sorry, lad, I got a bit distracted. Your last class is Ranking. It… well, it used to be hands-down the favorite class of the school, but… Well, first off, the class is where you battle your Pokemon against other people in your grade. Twice a week it's just people in your house, and its not official or nothing, but once a week you go up against your entire year. You get ranked that time, too, so that you know how good you're doing. But the problem is in the last couple years the class keeps going through a teacher a year. A lot of students believe the position's cursed, but I don't think so—Dumbledore says curses aren't real, and he's the smartest man around. Still is unusual, though. Professor Infortu has already said that he's not coming back next year. You'll get Professor Quirrell as your teacher, Harry. A good man if a bit… odd. He's teaching Alternative Careers right now—that's an upper level course—but I guess he wanted a change of pace."

"How about, you know, math and science and stuff?" Harry had asked. Surely the school wasn't so focused on training that it excluded everything else?

"Oh, well, I suppose they figure you got enough of that in primary. Plus a lot of students get tutored over summer break. But hey, it's not like knowing what exponents are will help you much with Pokemon, right?"

Just as Hagrid's less than complimentary views on the Slytherin house had forced Harry to change the subject, the man's increasingly alien perception of what was important or not did too. Thankfully, however, Harry knew just what to ask about. The only reason he hadn't broached the subject yet was because he knew for a fact that any information Hagrid had would disagree jarringly with what Harry thought he already knew, but Harry couldn't hold back his curiosity anymore and at the very least Hagrid did nothing to hide his biases.

So Harry had asked Hagrid about his parents. It didn't take long for Harry to be disappointed. Hagrid claimed them— _James and Lily Potter! Harry finally had first names!_ — as friends, sure, and he had certainly fought aside them against You-Know-Who, but there was a lot he didn't know. He couldn't answer why Harry's mom went to Spoinkperl while his Aunt went to Little Whinging. He hadn't ever asked if Harry had any relatives on his father's side, but he didn't think so—it was just a guess, though, Harry should ask Dumbledore. "He knows everything. Good man." He did know some things: Harry's dad liked to prank, and had a couple of friends he was always around, and he knew Harry's mom liked school, and was a bit of a loner, but he didn't know any of their hobbies. He didn't know if they had actual careers prior to the war. He didn't know why they'd decided to have Harry so young.

One thing Hagrid did know, however, was James and Lily Potter's Pokemon:

"Both of them had a full team, you know. Let's see… your dad had a Typhlosion, a Zangoose, a Braviary, a Sawsbuck, a Poliwrath, and a Simipour. Good team, that. Your mom… she had a Lilligant, a Darmanitan, a Florges, a Dragonite, a Primarina, and a Ribombee. She was a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, let me tell you."

"Where are their Pokemon now?" Harry had asked. Maybe he could meet them—he liked Pokemon more than people anyhow, and having that connection to his parents—

"I'm sorry, Harry, but I'm pretty sure they were all killed when your parents were."

Harry didn't ask any more questions about his parents after that.

Along with Harry, Bolt had also been eager for new information. Fang the Druddigon was the first non-wild Pokemon Bolt had ever met and while he was initially very put off by the whole disappears-into-a-ball thing, after a particularly vicious encounter between the Druddigon and a Mightyena (which the dragon type won) the little electric type found its hero. Bolt had begun following Fang everywhere and nuzzling into it whenever it stood still, and surprisingly enough while the Mightyena hadn't fazed the giant Pokemon apparently the idolization of a tiny Pokemon did. He had quickly taken to fleeing whenever Bolt came near and it had taken a frankly absurd number of pokepuffs before he'd finally stopped acting terrified of the tiny first-evolution.

It was hilarious.

Only a few days after they'd begun walking Hagrid had also introduced Harry to his other two Pokemon, but he'd refused to explain why he didn't have more—he'd mentioned while explaining the houses that almost everyone who graduated from Spoinkperl had six, but had been very tightlipped about why that didn't include him.

Instead, Hagrid had spent the time introducing each of his Pokemon to Harry separately and giving the boy a bit of information about each—any tidbits about Pokemon keeping Harry's attention much more than anything else.

Hagrid had started by formerly introducing Fang, who had been Hagrid's Pokemon since Year 2 of Spoinkperl. Fang's original owner was a fellow Gryffindor and a consummate battler who wanted fearless Pokemon, but unfortunately Fang was very timid. After his first trainer had tried to scare him into fighting back by attacking him with two Pokemon at once Fang had fled. The entire school, Hagrid had explained as he scratched the Druddigon's neck, had been ordered to help look for the missing dragon type.

Hagrid himself had found Fang two weeks later hiding near the edge of the "Forbidden Forest", which bordered the school, and then spent a full week coaxing him out with pokepuffs and promises of back scratches. By the end of it the original owner had given up on the Dragon type and Hagrid got his Pokemon.

Fang wasn't Hagrid's first Pokemon, though. His first was a bright pink monster of a normal type called Bewear. He had been gifted to Hagrid by Dumbledore, a Spoinkperl teacher at the time, after Hagrid got a scholarship to get into the prestigious academy. Hagrid had introduced Bewear the same day as Fang's formal introduction, and the massive pink beast had spent no time licking a giant stripe up the middle of Harry's face. The distraction of actually interacting with Bewear hadn't deterred Harry's search for knowledge, though, and while he had played with the normal type he'd continued to ask questions about whatever he could think of. That had ended when Harry asked why Hagrid had gotten a scholarship if he didn't have a Pokemon. The man had gotten oddly quiet and returned Bewear, and the two had hiked in silence for a while after that, one lost in memories and the other wary of offending his protector again.

Eventually, though, when they came across a particularly large clearing, Hagrid had seen fit to show Harry his last Pokemon:

"Now look, Harry, I'm going to show you my third Pokemon now. It was a gift from Dumbledore too—great man—so it's extremely powerful. I don't want you to get scared, now, so just stick behind me."

Harry promptly allowed the massive man to act as a shield between him and the clearing, and bent sideways a bit to watch as Hagrid released the pokeball.

The creature was… a beast in every sense of the word. Massive, black, blue, and purple, its three heads gazed around angrily at the clearing, on guard for any threat. It seemed to hover a bit in the air, and something about it looked downright malevolent. Harry gulped.

This. This was what the teacher in Little Whinging should have shown. This was terrifying.

Hagrid, though, seemed to disagree. "Hey there, Fluffy. Sorry I haven't let you out in a while. I was going to get the thing when I noticed a whole bunch of Pokemon near the border were agitated so I went to check up on them and I found a boy—" here Hagrid turned and gestured to Harry, still cowering in fear several meters away "—Harry here, so now we're going to take him back to Spoinkperl with us. Don't worry about the thing, you'll still be guarding it. Dumbledore said he'd have someone else get it and then give it to me when we're back in the city."

After that… interesting… bit of information Hagrid had returned "Fluffy" and the two had set off again.

Since then Harry had gotten a bit more information out of Hagrid about various Pokemon, but the constant hiking had also started to take its toll on his young body, so mostly he just focused on pushing forward. When Hagrid and Harry finally crested the crag Hagrid took one look at Harry and signaled Fang.

"We'll stop here for tonight. Don't worry, Harry, if I got my directions right then there's only one more day until we reach a road."

Harry grinned, tired but happy, and sat down. It was all he could do to stay awake through dinner, and as Hagrid finished dousing the fire Harry's eyes slid closed. He yawned, and Bolt mimicked him, before the two curled up next to each other and fell asleep. Hagrid smiled down on them and then looked into the distance. Yes, he'd suppose there was only a few more hours of walking before they hit Route 66, and while his tiny companion didn't care much now Hagrid was sure that by the morning it was he who would be having to play catch up as the little boy raced towards the region he had said he yearned for.

Hagrid stared at Harry again, then down at his own arm, where a series of scars marred his skin. He looked up towards Route 66 once more, this time with noticeably less happiness and noticeably more apprehension, and as he did so he prayed that Okoku wouldn't disappoint the little boy who had such high hopes for it. Harry deserved the region as he imagined it, not the region as it really was.

Hagrid shook his head, ridding it of its maudlin thoughts. It would be years until the little boy would have to face the problems of the region he was about to call home, so there was no point worrying about it now.


	4. Harry and the Culture Shock

The Knight Bus, Harry decided, was his punishment for every wrongdoing he had ever committed. It was a triple decker monstrosity, carrying upwards of, from what Harry could tell, fifty people at a time, but that did not stop the driver—Ernie?—from gunning it like he was in a sports car. It was terrifying.

The bus tilted as its two left wheels came off the ground and Harry squeezed his eyes shut, clutching Bolt even tighter to his chest. Hagrid, pressed against his left side, tried very hard not to lean into Harry, but the bus must've tilted at least 20 degrees before Ernie finally spun the wheel enough that it jolted to the other side and teetered back onto all four wheels.

"Isn't there any other way?" Harry finally snapped.

After they'd finally gotten to Motorway 1—the main route of Okoku—and boarded the Knight Bus, which had (apparently) gotten their location from Dumbledore, Harry had clammed up. There were people of all ages, heights, weights, dispositions—and all of them were crowded into the Knight Bus, talking and shouting and arguing and…

It had been too much. As Hagrid had finished arguing over whether Bolt could be allowed out during the trip (he'd won), Harry had stared at the giant mass of Okoku residents. The difference between them and Little Whinging couldn't be more astounding.

One guy had all of his hair but a stripe going from the front of his head to the back shaved off. A teenage girl sitting beside him was putting on lipstick, but also wearing— _were those sweatpants_? And the boy behind her had bright blue hair! Harry had snapped his head away, stunned, only to stare straight at a shirt which had the word—the word— _even Dudley wasn't allowed to say that_ word! Harry had begun to back away, only to be stopped by Hagrid's mass and pushed into a seat by a window—one of the few remaining which actually had another empty spot beside it.

Before Harry had even had time to process what he'd just seen Ernie had gunned the engine, and then he'd had more important things to think about—most importantly, keeping his lunch down.

But as the bus lurched again Harry couldn't bring himself to care about anything other than getting off.

"Nope." Hagrid laughed. "Only real transport we got between towns, if you don't count walking. I mean, there's trains too, but they only go a couple major places." A… boot?... suddenly flew through the air, smacking the massive man in the face. He grabbed it so casually that Harry gaped and shouted, "Anyone lost their boot?"

A guy with bright fuchsia hair and what most have been earrings for your nose stood up and waved. "Toss it back, yeah?"

Hagrid lobbed it at the teen, who caught it, before turning back to Harry. "Don't worry, Harry. No ones died on here in years!"

The bus tilted again and Harry's stomach rolled. Bolt, still pressed against his chest, didn't seem to be doing much better. He pressed his face into the Shinx's fur and took a deep breath.

"We can get through this, Bolt. It can't be that long, can it? Not at the speed we're going at, anyway." At the front of the bus Ernie laughed, and Harry had the sudden irrational fear that the man had heard him and was going to somehow force the bus to go faster. He kept his head down and hoped for the best.

Two Hours.

Two Hours.

Two hours of Harry constantly fearing for his life, of noise levels that he'd previously never imagined, of whipping through miles and miles of forest at speeds that should remain unknown for any bus, much less a triple-decker.

But he'd made it.

"And here we are!" Hagrid said, pulling the luggage that he'd stored under the bus. "Welcome to Public City!"

Harry had a feeling that by the end of the day he'd be numb to surprises, but that hadn't happened yet. He wasn't sure what he'd expected from the Capital of Okoku, but this wasn't it.

Little Whinging had been aligned in a perfectly even grid, pristine white sidewalks and designated residential and governmental and commercial and industrial districts. Little Whining had trees lining the middles of roads, weekly building inspections, and gardens in every backyard.

Public City? Not so much. From what he'd seen coming in the city just sort of… started. One minute there had been trees and grass and wilderness, and the next? The tallest building Harry had ever seen, immediately followed by who-knows-how-many others at least as tall. Hagrid called them skyscrapers. They were pressed together in irregular clusters, with no rhyme or reason to their height, their shape, their location, their anything! The sidewalks seemed to have been slapped haphazardly between buildings, and there weren't even any roads for trees to line the middle of except for the one the bus was driving on, and considering its condition Harry would be amazed if anything could live on it.

But despite all of that, despite how bizarre and unfamiliar Public City was, Harry loved it. Oddly shaped gray Pokémon carrying concrete beams worked on the construction of future buildings while flying types of all shapes and sizes flitted back and forth through the city, carrying packages on their talons. Rattata scampered in and out of storm drains, and he could see a visibly alive trash bag swallowing whole a visibly inanimate one.

And the best part? None of the people—the ones with hair dyed in every color imaginable, the ones who wore sports apparel but weren't running, the little kids who climbed onto fences and ledges and dumpsters as if unafraid of getting in trouble—not one of them batted an eye at any of the Pokémon.

Harry smiled. "Happy to be here."

Hagrid laughed and slapped a hand on Harry's shoulder, guiding him to a storefront on the bottom level of one of the skyscrapers—The Leaky Shuckle, a rather dilapidated sign proclaimed. "Glad to hear it. Let's get you settled in."

The Leaky Shuckle was, at it turns out, a place where you could eat and a place where you could sleep if you were far away from your house. Hagrid called it a pub and inn.

It reeked of alcohol, inside. The smell wasn't exactly unknown to Harry—both his aunt and uncle had partook on occasion, especially when Important Guests had come over, and occasionally, after Uncle Vernon had done particularly well or poorly, he and Aunt Petunia would go out without Dudley or Harry and come back smelling of it. But this was by far the most pungent amount of alcohol Harry had ever come across. The noise was similar to that of the Knight Bus, too, which didn't help Harry's impression of the place, but then Public City as a whole seemed to operate a few decibels higher than Harry was used to.

Hagrid and Harry were pressed between a couple of barstools at the bar as the larger man paid for two rooms for the night and asked for a menu, and unfortunately while that allowed Harry to keep a pretty good eye out on his surroundings—he knew better than to get backed into a corner—it also meant that nearly everybody could see him.

A man at the end of the bar glanced at him, then turned more fully and slurred, "You gotta put it in your pokéball."

Harry glanced back and forth, but the man was clearly talking to him and Hagrid was busy. "What?"

"You…" The man coughed, obviously drunk. "You gotta put your Pokémon in its pokéball. No Pokémon indoors."

The man's words had caught the attention of the other bar patrons, now, and they were beginning look at Harry and Bolt, too. Harry squirmed further into Hagrid, trying desperately to think of a way to catch the man's attention but paralyzed from the stares.

Then a woman spoke. "It can't be…"

Then another, hopefully: "No…"

Another, but this time a man: "It is! It is!"

The first woman to speak took a few steps towards him. "Harry Potter."

The floodgates opened and suddenly everybody in the bar was rushing towards him, shouting over one another—"Where were you?" "Why have you come back?" "Bless you! Bless you!" "Would you sign my napkin?" "It's an honor, an honor!"

By this point Hagrid finally realized what was happening and began physically forcing people away from Harry. "Move aside! Move aside! He's just a boy! You're overwhelming him!" With the help of Tom, who threatened anyone who refused to move, Hagrid managed to push Harry into the elevator. The doors closed behind the two as Tom kept anyone from lunging into the elevator at the last minute. Hagrid quickly pressed a button—2—and the elevator pitched upwards. They got off on a hallway with numbered doors lining either side and Hagrid pushed Harry and Bolt forward until they arrived at one of the doors—"24"—before locking the door behind them.

"Sorry, Harry. I shoulda warned you." Hagrid sighed, and sat on the bed closest to the door.

It was a small room, with a bathroom immediately to the right of the entrance and two queen beds taking up the majority of the space in the central part of the room. A television—turned off—sat opposite the beds on a set of drawers. It looked like an older model, one which Harry only saw in pictures and videos of Little Whining 10 or 20 years ago, but a remote sat next to it, so it was clearly still operable.

"Warned me about what?" Harry snapped. It was the first time he'd backtalked Hagrid since the first few days. Harry usually knew better than to do that—you never knew what punishment the adult would throw at you—but he was irritated, and confused, and tired, and a whole bunch of people had just treated him like he was the Mayor himself.

"Your famous, Harry."

Harry stared at Hagrid. "No, really? I mean, it's not like any of them were saying my name over and over or anything. Not like that at all." Hagrid growled, then, obviously unprepared for Harry's sudden attitude shift, and Harry couldn't help it—he flinched, eyes screwed shut for the blow. He'd messed up. He knew better than to be a smartass—he didn't deserve the benefit of the doubt like Dudley—and now Hagrid was going to realize that this was a mistake. That Harry wasn't worthy. And then… and then, after Hagrid felt him sufficiently punished, he would send Harry back to Little Whinging, and Bolt to become meat at the supermarket because what was the point of continuing to take care of useless boy who didn't even know not to backchat and his friend?

But the blow didn't come. Bolt growled from his place in front of Harry, but he didn't attack Hagrid either.

"Harry…" Hagrid's voice was soft, gentle, almost scared. "Harry. Oh Harry…" Harry cracked his eyes open enough to see a hand reaching towards him and he flinched back instinctively, only for Hagrid to yank the hand back as if burnt. "I'm not gonna…I'm not gonna hit you, Harry, ok? I promise I'm not."

Harry slowly uncurled his body, watching Hagrid carefully. But the man seemed to be telling the truth. He'd backed up a few feet, and was now staring cautiously at Harry, both arms held out, palms up.

And Harry suddenly felt ashamed. He had been awful for the first day or so with Hagrid, smartassing and running away and even trying to attack him once caught, but the man had never hit Harry. He'd never spanked him, or beat him, or even starved him. And besides that, he hadn't actually done anything to make Harry think that would change, either—he'd just backchatted and assumed the blow would come.

But it didn't.

Because Harry wasn't in Little Whinging anymore. And Hagrid was kind, and gentle, and had spent hours telling Harry stories even though he wasn't getting anything in return.

It took less than a second for Harry to throw himself onto Hagrid, not bothering to hold back the tears, and sob into the man's hug.

He finally felt like he could breath, like he could _feel_. For the first time in his memory Harry knew he was allowed to backchat, he was allowed to whine, he was allowed to cry. Hagrid wouldn't punish him, he wouldn't beat him, he wouldn't starve him or force him to work until his muscles gave our or lock him into a too-small closet for hours at a time.

Tomorrow he'd deal with his unexpected fame. Tomorrow he'd deal with the strangeness of the region. Tomorrow he'd deal with Spoinkperl, and Public City, and the Leaky Shuckle.

Tonight he'd be held for what was surely the first time since his parents and cry for the first time in almost as long. He'd eat new foods—fried asparagus and grilled cheese—and watch his first TV show with Pokémon—one geared towards kids, called Looney Toons, and ignore Hagrid's melancholy looks. He'd try hot cocoa for the first time, and have take a shower and a bath because Hagrid said he was allowed in the bathroom for as long as he'd like.

Tomorrow he'd go back to confronting the unknown, but tonight? Tonight he'd revel in it.


	5. Harry and the Bank

Diagon Alley was amazing. It was the central street of Public City, running arbitrarily from about the middle of the southwest section of the city, where Motorway 1 crossed through, to the end of the northeast, where Hagrid said the government buildings were generally located. It was as wide as a road, but clearly meant to solely be a walkway, and skyscrapers lined either side, with bridges connecting them seemingly randomly crisscrossing above the street. Because of that, sunlight was a bit hard to come by, and instead lights—mostly white but occasionally dazzling neon colors—in various shapes and sizes dotted along the walls and under the bridges in order to keep the street bright enough. If Harry didn't know better, actually, he'd say that it was late afternoon when they began walking, instead of 13:00 (Hagrid had allowed him to stay in and watch cartoons all morning.)

The best part about the Alley (that wasn't an alley) was the shops. While some—a small video game store, for instance, or a pharmacy—were familiar to Harry, many, many more were not.

"See that, there?" Hagrid asked, pointing to a store with a blue stripe over its door and a sign like a pokeball on its front. "That's a pokemart. We'll stop by there after we visit the bank, because it's got most of what Bolt needs, although there are more specialized shops if he needs anything in particular. And over there?" Now Hagrid pointed at a shop with huge storefront windows displaying manakins wearing odd clothing and carrying ropes. "That sells the things you need for hiking and the like."

As the two meandered down Diagon, Hagrid continued to point out various stores, explaining what was in them and if and when they would visit them—"That over there is Madam Malkin's. She's the one you'll go to when we get your school uniform, but I think we should wait a bit for that yet."

The bank, the first stop of the day, was called Gringotts. Two Granbull stood on either side of the entrance, and Ash could see the tiny brown heads of another Pokemon he didn't know the name of poking out at irregular intervals around the bank.

"This is Gringotts, Harry. It is the only bank in all of Okoku, so it is incredibly well protected. Granbull—those are the purplish Pokemon you see—and Dugtrio—those are the brown ones—are the most obvious defenses, but they also have Dragon types all over inside. Getting a career as a guard here is nothing to scoff at—in fact, it's a favorite choice of Spoinkperl graduates."

Harry nodded, but Hagrid wasn't done.

"The bankers are, well, they're not Pokemon trainers. They just want you to do your business and get out. Be polite and you shouldn't have any issues."

Before Harry had any time to process this they were inside.

The atrium of Gringotts was pearly white. The marble floor was exactly the same stone as the marble walls, which themselves matched the high marble ceiling. Short marble fences divided the center of the room into multiple long winding routes, which each began in a line of six at the front and ended at various tellers around the room, who all sat in cushy white chairs behind white (seemingly non-marble) desks holding white desktop computers, themselves behind white half walls with a glass-and-metal combination wall on top.

Harry had a sudden feeling that if he'd ever visited the bank back in Little Whinging it would look a lot like this.

He, Hagrid, and the still uncaught Bolt all entered a line marked "Appointments" and wound through the fences until they arrived at the back of the atrium. Unlike all of the tellers that Harry had noticed closer to the front of the room, this man had a door next to his desk.

"Name?" He asked.

"Rubeus Hagrid and Harry Potter here about Harry Potter's finances."

"I just asked for your names." The man said, typing something in the computer, then paused.

"Do you have an appointment."

"Yes. For one thirty." Hagrid answered.

"It is currently one twenty-six." The man said.

"Err… yes."

"Arrive earlier next time." 

"Sure, of course."

The man sighed, typed some more in his computer, and got up. Harry wanted to call him something other than the man, but he had no name placard and he had made no effort to introduce himself.

The man opened the door and pointed to a reinforced black door immediately across from it. "Go through there, take a right, enter that door. Do not touch anything." He stared at Bolt for a second, apparently having noticed him for the first time. "Why is that Pokemon not in a pokeball?"

"Err… that's the thing, you see. He hasn't actually… been caught yet."

The man frowned.

Hagrid stammered a bit (Harry was more than a little shocked about how clearly uncomfortable and slightly scared he seemed) and added, "we're gonna do that the second we leave! It's just, well, pokeballs aren't free, you know?"

The man kept on frowning.

Hagrid looked flustered now. Harry was starting to get worried. Bolt buried his head in Harry's neck. "It's barely a few years old, and never been trained, I swear." Harry, irrationally, felt a bit upset about that comment. He'd done the best he could! "He'll be nice and quiet, I promise."

The man continued to frown, but opened the door. "Don't try anything foolish."

Hagrid nodded rapidly and the two entered the hallway, before immediately heading into the door.

The room, while not entirely white like the atrium, was still unerringly clean. A wooden desk sat in the middle of the room, with its black leather office chair facing them. Behind the desk stood two tall wooden bookcases framing a dark wooden door. On top of the desk sat a black desktop. There were two wooden chairs directly in front of the desk. There was nothing else in the room, not even a painting to break up the monotony of the white painted walls.

Harry and Hagrid sat on the wooden chairs.

Harry scratched Bolt's neck as he waited. Bolt was cleaner than Harry had ever seen him—Hagrid had dumped the Shinx in the bathtub that morning and spent around an hour teaching Harry how to clean him. Bolt hadn't had the best time, but a lot of that was because he'd never been washed before—he'd had clumps of hair and blood soaked scars whose only previous treatment had been rainwater. Thankfully, Hagrid had been able to mostly clean him up, and they would be going to something called a Pokemon Center later that day.

The wooden door opened.

A man stepped out. He had a bit of a hook like nose and pointy ears. He was also quite short. Harry thought he looked kind of like a taller and uglier version of a Christmas elf, but he knew to keep his mouth shut about that.

"Mr. Potter, I presume?"

"Yes, sir." Harry said.

"And Mr. Rubeus Hagrid?"

"Yessir." Hagrid said, before shuffling a bit and pulling out a device. "I got the guardian consent form if you need it."

The not-elf took the device, carefully touching as little of it as possible, and swiped it for a few seconds, before handing it back. "Your forms are in order, you will be allowed to stay. Shall we get to the discussion of assets?"

"What?" Harry asked before he could stop himself.

"Your assets, Harry." Hagrid repeated. "Dumbledore figured you should know what you got."

"Oh." Harry said as the banker frowned impatiently. "Okay."

The banker pulled a folder out of one of the drawers and handed to him. "Copies of your finances. Suffice to say, you don't have much. Prior to his death your father went on a bit of a spending spree—"

Hagrid suddenly interrupted, visibly upset. "He was funding the war!"

The banker did not react. "Regardless, the result is the same. You have almost no money. It will—probably—hold you over until about seventeen or so, but you should look into finding a job at some point in the future. I would highly suggest not spending more than $1000 a year. That said, your… lack of funds, as well as your parents' status as alumni, qualifies you for a Spoinkperl scholarship, which will cover your room and board, as well as medical expenses, while you attend."

"Oh." Harry said again. He wasn't sure what to think about that—it was good that he wouldn't have to worry about affording his education, at least, but, and this was presuming that everything else in Okoku didn't have the ridiculous mark-up that gas did, dealing with the summers would be a bit difficult.

"Don't worry, Harry. Dumbledore will definitely sort out your living situation by next summer, and he's working on a set-up for this year's summer which he says will be ready in the next couple of days."

"That's good, I guess." Harry said. He opened the folder in his lap. Most of the numbers were meaningless to him, but he did notice that there were only $10,000 overall in the account. While that was, quite frankly, an insane amount of money to Harry, given that the banker and Hagrid were both treating it as pittance he knew he'd have to scrimp and save. Given that the entire goal for today was to buy him clothing, food, toiletries, and other necessities it wouldn't exactly be easy, especially as he didn't know where to start.

"Moving on," the banker said, apparently deciding that enough time had been wasted as is, "this is your ID card." He handed Harry a small blue piece of plastic, the same size as a credit card. As you can see, it serves multiple functions: it gives your name, date of birth, gym badge number, career, identification number, and picture, and acts as a debit card."

Sure enough, the card listed him as Harry Potter-31/07/1980-N/A-N/A-7777777 and had a picture of him from that very day, given his shirt. He didn't know when it had been taken, and the background was completely blank, which didn't really give him any ideas.

"Some places also use it as an identification card, to decide whether you are allowed to enter there. You will see a card swipe on the side of a door which uses this feature."

Harry nodded to show that he understood and the banker moved on again. Over the next half hour the man explained, as briskly and bluntly as possible, about how to withdraw from, deposit into, and move funds between accounts, before explaining his tax calculations (minimal, given his status as an unemployed child orphan), and how to get updates about his money (currently all he could do was go to a bank, but a number of devices offered apps for him to check his balance in that way.) Harry only spoke up once beyond the yesses and nos required when asked for, to ask about whether his mother had any money in the bank. That hope was quickly quashed.

"No. Your mother joined your father's family's account when they married, and while she did inherit a not-unsubstantial amount of money after your maternal grandparent's passing, that was before your father spent it." 

Hagrid shifted, clearly upset, but Harry didn't much care about the banker's clear distaste for the reason behind his father's premortem spending habits. He knew he probably should—after all, the banker was disparaging one of the few people that Harry actually had good memories of—but honestly it wasn't as if there was much he could do.

Eventually the meeting was over and Harry, Hagrid, and Bolt (who had been completely ignored throughout the meeting and had quickly fallen asleep) were shafted back outside.

The bank, Harry decided, sucked.

"Let's… let's go get some food. Hagrid said. He grabbed one of Harry's hands and began leading them over to a small cart-like thing which sat in the road and advertised various meals. Harry decided not to point out that it was only just after 14:00, especially because Hagrid had clearly chosen the place due to its "vegetarian" sign, which apparently meant that it didn't serve Pokemon meat.

Besides, he'd never had a second lunch before. Or falafel. What an odd word, falafel. He wondered if it tasted like it sounded.


	6. Harry and the Meaning of Things

The first few shops after the falafel (which did not taste like it sounded, but was still quite good) passed by in a blur. They were in and out of the bookstore quite quickly—all they'd bought were basic writing utensils, a pencil case apparently shaped like a charjabug, and six spiral notebooks and folders in six different colors. He'd asked about possibly getting books, but Hagrid said that he should probably wait because he could borrow them for free at the school library, so there was little else to do there.

After that they'd darted into a Poké-care store, where they'd bought special brushes, soaps, food, and other equipment for Bolt. The total had been $351.50. The banker, at least, had been right about that—the money he had wouldn't last long, free scholarship or not.

They'd gone into a supermarket afterwards and bought the same things for him, which had only cost about $220. But then, while he had needed shirts, pants, shoes, and… other things, he hadn't needed training weights or special files for his nails, which had apparently been a significant portion of the bill at the Poké-Care shop.

They were at their fourth stop now, Madam Malkin's, and both Harry and Bolt were lagging.

"C'mon, boys," Hagrid said. "We only have to do… three more stops, including this one, and then we're done for the day."

Harry tried to smile.

The clothing store—for that was what it was—had a nice atmosphere, overall. It had a high enough ceiling for Hagrid to stand comfortably, and while most of the walls were covered by racks of fabric in every color there were also mannequins of men and women and boys and girls and even Pokémon dotted around the store's floor, with small, brightly lit, tables underneath holding up two books each, all of them opened to pages describing options on this garment or that.

"Now, Harry, this store's a bit more expensive then just buying a couple shirts at the supermarket, like we did for most of your clothes. That said, it's also really good tailoring, and Madam Malkin never charges much for the basic Spoinkperl uniform."

"Okay." Harry replied, just as a woman bustled in from around a group of mannequins towards the back of the store.

"Hello, dearie! Oh, and who's this?" She greeted, before suddenly turning to Bolt.

"He's Bolt." Harry said, a bit possessively. "He's my friend."

"Well, it's very nice to meet you, Bolt." She said, patting him on the head a bit. "Is he your first Pokémon?"

"He's my first friend." Harry replied. He was fairly sure that wasn't what she had meant, but he didn't like the idea of 'owning' Bolt, or getting into an argument, so he'd decided to answer neutrally.

"That's so nice! You know, I still remember getting my first Pokémon. I didn't want to let him into his Pokéball either!"

"What Pokémon?" Harry asked. He'd already been blown away with how many there were, and wanted to know about as much of them as possible.

As Madam Malkin ushered him to the side of the store, where three mirrors stood on half of the sides of a slightly elevated hexagon, she began to explain. "Oh, I was about your age, you know. About to start Spoinkperl, and oh-so-eager to meet my Pokémon, and… they gave me a Wurmple."

Harry made a confused sound, but Madam Malkin didn't notice, instead pulling out a tape measure.

"The Spoinkperl uniform, right?"

"Um, yes." He said, but before he could ask what a Wurmple was she'd continued on.

"I wasn't exactly pleased, at first—they were so weak, and I was so worried about being bullied, and on top of that their faces—well, you know what they say about Wurmple's mouths. Except, then I met him, and I loved him at first glance. I think it should always be like that when you meet your first Pokémon, you know—you should just, click, or else you have a bad connection and you won't be able to do nearly as well. There we, are dearie." Harry turned to face her as she continued to talk. As she did so she pulled black fabric out of what seemed like thin air and began to put together the uniform on a conveniently placed table, making practiced cuts without a second of hesitation.

"Well, anyway, it was only a few short months later that I realized that Pokémon battling would never be for me. I was good enough, of course—would never have gotten the money to establish this place if I wasn't—but I didn't particularly enjoy it, and I was wondering what to do when, what do you know, my Wurmple evolves! And into a Silcoon, no less. You know what a Silcoon is, right?" Madam Malkin didn't wait for an answer. "They evolve into one of the most beautiful Pokémon imaginable—Beautifly! And so, when my little Wurmple evolved, I decided I should too. And because my Wurmple was going to make the world a more beautiful place, pardon the pun, I'd follow his lead. And now here I am today!"

She had, while talking, gone over to a sewing machine and in only a few smooth movements formed a pair of pants, which she handed to Harry. "Here, try these on. There's a fitting room over there. I'll have your shirts ready when you're done."

Fifteen minutes later Hagrid, Harry, and Bolt were out of the store and moving down the street, with four pants, two jackets, and five white shirts with the school emblem—a pale pink circle surrounded by all the colors of the rainbow divided into four select sections. Red, grey, dark orange, and indigo radiated out on the upper left, dark black, blue, violet, and light blue beams were stitched on the upper right, with two shades of brown, two shades of green, light grey, and light pink directly below, and lilac, hot pink, yellow, and purple rounding the circle out. It honestly looked much too busy for Harry, but he wasn't going to complain. It was yet another official sign that his life was getting better.

But now… now he, Hagrid, and Bolt were standing in front of Ollivander's Pokéballs.

"I'm not putting Bolt in a Pokéball." Harry said. He remembered too well Chapter 2 of his book on Pokémon. Pokéballs forced Pokémon to obey, and Harry wasn't going to force Bolt to do anything. Hagrid sighed.

"Harry—"

"I'm not!"

"You have to!" Hagrid tried.

"Bolt doesn't deserve it! He did nothing wrong." Harry rejoined.

Hagrid opened his mouth again, likely to argue back, then sighed. "Look, can you at least go inside? Have Ollivander explain to you what, exactly, a Pokéball is?"

Harry wanted to refuse, but there wasn't really a reason for him to—the request was, after all, a reasonable one, so instead Harry set his jaw and nodded. He knew there was nothing this "Ollivander" could do to convince him that forcing his Pokémon to listen to him was a good idea.

The inside of the shop was rather…busy. Even busier than Madam Malkin's, in fact. Or the supermarket's. There were stacks upon stacks of clear boxes, each with jumbles of balls in them. The entire right wall of the store was covered, floor to ceiling, in boxes containing the red-and-white balls Harry already knew of, but the rest of the store had containers other Pokéballs in almost every color imaginable, all of them strewn about carelessly. Muttering was coming from the back left of the store, where a door stood ajar.

"Hello?" Hagrid asked.

"Oh? Oh! Hello, hello, hello!" An elderly man said, his head popping out from behind the door. "How may I help you today? Ah! Let me guess, you need a pokéball!" The man laughed. "Now, which one? A standard pokéball? How about a Timer ball? Or—I know—you can follow your father's route, and go straight for an Ultraball! Not that your grandfather let him buy one, mind, even if Pokémon find it impossible to escape."

Harry flinched back. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that his father was not a nice person.

"Harry here doesn't really like pokéballs." Hagrid said, patting his shoulder

"I'm not going to make Bolt listen to me!" Harry scowled.

"Oh-ho-ho!" Ollivander said. "But that's not all a Pokéball does, is it? It reduces feeding costs, it keeps any injuries from worsening—and trust me, you'll need that for when you're going to Spoinkperl. Can't graduate without a few good fights, can you?"

"I'm not putting Bolt in a pokéball!" Harry said, again. He knew all that—the book had listed all the goods of the pokéball in much the same way Ollivander did—but Harry couldn't get over the book's off-hand mention that Pokémon never seemed to actually want to go _into_ their pokéballs. "If Bolt isn't going to be comfortable in it, there's no way I'll ever use it."

"Well, I suppose you could get a luxury ball. Outfitted for a Pokémon's comfort, you know—"

Before Ollivander could continue espousing the benefits of a luxury ball, Hagrid interrupted, uncomfortable.

"Erm, he can't afford that."

"Well why not?" Ollivander asked. "I mean, admittedly, his grandfather didn't allow young James the benefit of an ultra ball, but he had no problem shelling out to get him a great ball, and while Lily had gotten a regular pokéball when she was eleven, she'd wasted no time upgrading to luxury balls when she had the money."

"The money… it's gone." Hagrid said.

Harry frowned. "Well, I'm not putting Bolt in any other kind of pokéball."

Ollivander was quiet. So was Hagrid.

Finally, Harry remembered the little excerpt on the side of the chapter. "How about apricorns?"

"What?" Ollivander asked.

"Apricorns!" Harry said. "This book I have on Pokémon mentioned them, and apparently Pokémon like going into one of them—the "friend ball." Do you have any of those?"

Ollivander spluttered. "Apricorns? Apricorns? Do you know how subpar those are? They almost never work on wild captures, and they have barely any time manipulation capabilities, and they're so large!"

"Well, I want a friend ball." Harry said. He thought about stomping his foot, like Dudley did to show his resolve, but thought better of it.

Ollivander sighed, visibly upset. "I'll check the back." He moved into the back room, and his voice drifted back to Harry as he continued talking. "You know," he said offhandedly, "you aren't the first boy in recent years to ask for an Apricorn."

"Really?" Harry asked.

"Yes. There was a boy… oh, 50 or so years ago.. about 54, actually." He popped back in from the back room, carrying a cardboard box. "He had the same Pokémon too, a little Shinx with large white fangs." He sat the box on the cashier table and began to rifle through it. "He was poor, like you, too, and couldn't really afford anything other than a pokéball, but he wanted something stronger than that. So he asked for some Apricorn balls, and I gave him two of each for free—not like anyone else would want them." Here Ollivander looked up at Harry, one hand still in the box. "And do you know what he did with them?"

"What?" Harry asked.

"He went on to become the Okoku's worst terrorist." Ollivander's hand suddenly shot out, dumping a handful of green and white balls in Harry's hands, about twice the size of any of the other pokéballs in the room. Then he laughed as Hagrid pushed Harry out the door and Bolt scampered behind him.

"Let's… let's go back to the Leaky Shuckle now, Harry." Hagrid said, as visibly shaken as Harry felt. "We can finish up tomorrow."


	7. Harry and the Doctors

The next morning, after breakfast (Kalos toast!), Harry, Hagrid, and Bolt trooped to the Pokémon Center. It was a large four story building near the road, and from what Harry could tell of the map that hung between the two sets of elevators, it was a hotel cum cafeteria cum Pokémon doctor's office cum doctor's office cum internet cafe. And he hadn't even been able to read half of the map's legend before the elevator arrived!

Their first stop was the Pokémon Doctor. Pokémon Medical Care, as the legend had described it, was located on the entirety of the third floor—there was a front desk in front of the elevators, and two hallways shot off on slight angles from either side. Colored swatches lined the wall of each.

"Hello, and welcome to the Diagon Alley Pokémon Medical Care Center, located at the Diagon Alley Pokémon Center! How may I help you today?"

"Err… yeah." Hagrid said. "We're looking to get this lad's Pokémon checked out." He patted Harry on the shoulder, then added, "It's a Shinx."

"Alright," the front desk lady (Patrice, according to her name tag) replied. "If you would just fill out these forms…" She handed Hagrid a clipboard, about five or six pages long. Hagrid grimaced, but nodded, leading Harry to a small seating area to the left of the elevators.

"I hate paperwork." Hagrid muttered as he took a loveseat for himself. He fished his wallet out of a coat pocket, and flipped through it, before pulling out a card. He pulled a pen out of another pocket and turned to the clipboard, settling into his seat.

While Hagrid was busy taking care of the paperwork, Harry took a look around. The waiting room was quite plain, but there were some areas of interest.

First and foremost, at least in Harry's mind, were the pictures. There were four of them—one on either side of the elevators, two on the walls perpendicular to them, and one large one behind Patrice.

They were of Pokémon.

One, directly behind Harry, depicted a wintry scene. Tiny black Pokémon, peaking out of what lookéd like triangular yellow coats, dotted a snowy field, while a massive white creature lumbered toward the camera in the middle of the frame. Harry didn't know the names of either of the Pokémon depicted, but the scene was beautiful, from the large coniferous trees lining the sides to the mountains in the background. Harry himself had never seen mountains, and coniferous trees were, for a reason that had always escaped Harry, frowned upon in Little Whinging.

But that was nothing compared to what the next picture showed. It was taken underwater, and a group of many-legged blue and pink creatures were smiling at the camera from all sides. Just in the upper right of the background a blue and white creature was diving underneath the surface of the water, nearly entirely enmeshed in the resulting bubbles.

The other two pictures on the opposite side of the room were equally fascinating: a field, similar to the one between Little Whinging and Okoku, with a pack of Sawsbuck (this animal had, thankfully, actually appeared in one of the books) and… Sawsbuck babies? Without the head sticks?... in the middle of the clearing, and a painting of a group of all sorts of flying Pokémon that Harry couldn't even hope to identify dancing together in the air.

It was, however, the one directly behind Patrice that demanded the most attention. Unlike the others it wasn't a nature scene, and, as far as Harry could tell, no Pokémon were depicted. The background was white, and three objects filled the center: a golden circle with a black vaguely shaped triangle within, and a series of red horizontal stripes framed by gold drawing a line down the center.

Neither Hagrid or Patrice looked inclined to answer questions at the moment—the former wholly absorbed with the clipboard, and the latter wholly absorbed on the computer—so rather than asking about what the picture represented, Harry turned his attention to the magazines on the coffee table in front of him.

None of them were less than two years old, but they all grabbed Harry's attention just the same as the paintings had for one reason: they were all about Pokémon.

 _Pokémon Weekly_ was a periodical about the (at the time) current competitors in the Rose League, the massive competition which so much of Okoku was based around. While two of them, the 1974 issue and the 1986 issue, were flipped through quite quickly by Harry, but the third, the 1975 issue, he spent longer on, simply because, just after the "aspiring Graduates" list, which listed the 7th year Spoinkperl students who were most likely to do well in the Rose League, was the "notable 5th years" list. In it, at #1, was his father. Not only that, but several ranks down, at #5, his mother's name was listed. Unfortunately, because the list was only about 5th years, only their names were printed, but even that small example of their life, of their existence, kept him staring at the page until Hagrid stood up to return the paperwork.

As Hagrid moved back to his seat, Harry examined the rest of the magazine covers. He wasn't particularly interested in _Pokékids!_ or _The Good Breeder_ , and he didn't even know what _The Pokémaniac_ could be about. It was the final series of magazines, _Very Berry_ , that caught his notice. Unlike the previous magazines, its pages weren't glossy and finished. Instead it felt like thin paper, but its coloring was greyer than he was used to. A giant drawing of an Oran bush took up most of the cover, leaving only enough room for the title and the small header: _Oran Berries: Underrated, Underutilized, Overpowered._ Harry flipped it open as Patrice warned Hagrid that the doctor would see them in about 15 minutes and "that Shinx better behave itself until then." Bolt, nestled between Harry's legs, cocked his head—he hadn't actually been doing anything, so the warning seemed unnecessary, but neither Bolt nor Harry were about to question the woman.

There was a short index of the articles in the magazine on page one: the feature, which was about Oran berries, as well as a small section on ideal fertilizers and another on recommended watering practices. It was what was written on the bottom of the page, though, that really drew Harry's eye— _Don't forget to check the back of Very Berry's for your very own Feature Seeds!_

Harry flipped the magazine over, opening the last page. Sure enough, connected to the final page was a small paper packet with a drawing of a single Oran berry painted on it. Harry looked up, glancing first at Patrice then Hagrid. Bolt cocked his head, eying Harry as he carefully tore the packet off, slipping it into the pocket of his (brand new) jacket before any human could notice.

Harry spent the rest of the fifteen minutes reading through the rest of the magazine, taking careful note of its many gardening tips on how to bring out the best berries for Pokémon, rather than for beauty as his Aunt Petunia had focused on, before ripping out the subscription card in the middle of the magazine. He'd see if Hagrid would be willing to help him fill it out and mail it later, but Patrice had finally announced that they could move to the examination room. Hagrid put away the small book he had been reading, and Harry set down the magazine. They were led down one of the hallways and into a door labelled with a yellow colored swatch, and the door was closed behind them.

"So, Harry, Bolt, this is the examination room." Hagrid said. Harry and Bolt looked around.

It was a relatively large room—about as big as the Dursley's living room—but the walls, ceiling, and floor about half of it was covered in something grayish. On the right of the room, between the gray section and the door, was a set of drawers and cupboards, and a sink, as well as plenty of medical-looking items. To the left of the door two chairs set in line next to a short, wide examination table covered in the same gray substance.

"So, um… the doc's going to examine Bolt, you know, and make sure he's healthy, and then they're going to give Bolt some medicine. That part's not going to be fun, because they're going to have to shoot up Bolt. But I promise it's for his own good, so you're going to have to stay calm during it, okay?"

Harry hesitantly nodded. Next to his feet Bolt squirmed, but did the same. Harry, at least, was used to shots—he remembered having to get three in Little Whinging—but he also knew how uncomfortable having a needle facing you was. "It's okay, Bolt. I had to get shots too, you know, but it stops hurting really quickly."

Hagrid, cheered by Harry's reaction, continued. "Besides, it'll be good practice: I know Bolt hasn't had much battle experience, so he'll need to get used to pain anyway."

Harry grimaced. He knew that, of course—it had been mentioned in the book he stole from the library, and he'd already talked to Bolt about it—but the idea of _willingly_ putting his best friend into danger… before Harry could reply the door opened again.

"Hello. My name is Dr. Fortescue, and this is my Blissey Twirl. We'll be the ones completing your pre-Spoinkperl examination today. Now, from what I understand you two have _both_ been living in Little Whinging until today?"

Having the focus on him wasn't Harry's favorite thing in the world—a disposition which certainly hadn't been helped by the bank and Pokéball store—but he forced himself to answer. "Erm, yes sir."

"Alright, Bolt, can I have you get up on the exam table, please?" Dr. Fortescue said. Bolt amiably hopped up, kneading the mat a bit before lying down.

Dr. Fortescue then began his examination. Harry watch closely as he had Bolt stand and go through stretches, as he listened to Bolt's heart and scanned various parts of his torso.

After a few minutes Dr. Fortescue led Bolt into the other half of the room, explaining as he did, "I'm now going to test Bolt's moves—I need to get an idea of his level, his understanding of the moves, and if anything is unduly hampering them."

He got out a different scanner, then, and began to lead Bolt through the arduous task of using moves he never had before. It took well over half an hour to get through all of the six moves Dr. Fortescue's scanner said Bolt should be able to perform, but in the end Bolt was able to go through Tackle, Leer, Charge, Baby Doll Eyes, and Ice Fang (the latter of which Dr. Fortescue called an _egg move_ , and seemed quite surprised about) without any trouble.

Four shots and a bit of a weird egg later and Dr. Fortescue happily signed the papers saying Bolt was ready for Spoinkperl. "I'd have him practice his moves a bit more, though—he's got good instincts, and he's actually notably stronger than most Pokémon are when they start the academy, but it's really obvious he hasn't had much practice."

Harry smiled and nodded, thanking Dr. Fortescue while Bolt licked his hands.

As Hagrid led him back into the elevator Harry wondered about being a doctor as a career—helping, instead of hurting. The only problem was that, according to his stolen book, your career choices were dictated by how well you did in the Rose League. He wasn't completely sure if it was the same here, but in Little Whinging being a doctor was something people aspired to, and Harry didn't know if he'd be able to do well enough in the League to become a doctor.

Before he could spend much time thinking about it, though, they'd arrived on the sixth floor—Human Medical Services. This floor, Harry quickly found, was much more of a maze of hallways than the fourth. They'd gone past three hallways and taken a right on the fourth, before Hagrid had backed up and took them to the sixth and last hallway to take a left, before they almost immediately took another left again.

"I know it was somewhere around here…" Hagrid muttered. In the end it only took them a few minutes to find the room—Carrow Pediatrics—but Harry still felt it took too long. Unfortunately he knew the name of the game for doctors offices: wait, wait, wait. Even after they'd found the office they were just burdened with a clipboard of three times more paper than Patrice had given, and unlike Pokémon Medical Services here Harry was expected to have the answers.

For the next twenty or so minutes, while Hagrid filled out the payment and family history forms, Harry filled out the "patient" forms. He tried desperately to remember what shots he'd been given, and when, and when the last time he'd been sick was, and if he'd ever had an allergic reaction…

Bolt, unfortunately, had to be returned—the receptionist sneeringly explained that they couldn't have an electric type messing anything up—never mind that Bolt had been completely well behaved no matter where they went.

Thankfully, Bolt didn't seem to mind the Friend Ball Harry had placed him in, for all that he clearly preferred being out. Harry kept the ball in his right packet, right next to his (maybe-technically-stolen) seeds, and tapped the ball repeatedly, reassuring himself that even if it seemed far too small to fit his friend Bolt was still safe and nearby.

His… upset… over Bolt's treatment worsened, however, when another patient's mother's Pokémon, one that Hagrid identified as a Weavile, was allowed to stay out.

It took over an hour for them to be called back, even after returning the forms. In between Hagrid double checking that they would, actually, be seen, Hagrid took the time to teach him a few games: I Spy, Pokémon Train, GHOST… at least until another patient (whose Skrelp was also not made to return) snapped at them to shut up. The girl couldn't have been older than seven, but Hagrid had listened immediately, glancing at the girl's father with no small amount of apprehension, so Harry stayed quiet too, simply rubbing his finger against Bolt's ball and daydreaming quietly, a technique he'd perfected under the Dursleys' stairs.

Eventually, though, they were called back. The room was about how Harry remembered Little Whinging's own exam rooms being, and after another twenty minute wait (now with Hagrid routinely checking his watch) a nurse came in, double checked his information, and left again.

Finally, ten minutes after that, the doctor finally answered. A sallow man with a sallow beard and a narrow but large nose, he grimaced at Hagrid, before staring at Harry for a few seconds, his expression almost unreadable. But Harry knew that face—knew it from when Aunt Petunia's friends, who had only ever heard the worst about him, came to visit. Knew it from every teacher at the beginning of the year, and the distrustful store clerks, who would overhear Aunt Petunia's overly loud admonishments against stealing.

That expression meant 'my personal view on how people should act means that I will not actually say that I believe you are worthless and should not go within one hundred feet of me or that I believe that the only way you could ever serve the community would be to leave and never come back, but you can be absolutely sure that I will think that the entire time I have to interact with you, so you had better wish our time together is short, or else I will find a way to make your life miserable without ever acting in a way I think is improper.' It was a very specific expression, and one Harry had hoped never to see again.

"I am the doctor, Dr. Carrow. Get on the bed, we'll begin your examination immediately."

Harry glanced at Hagrid, but while the man looked slightly uncomfortable it was clear that he did not know what the expression meant and with the doctor standing right there it wasn't as if Harry could tell him—

"Get on the bed now, Mr. Potter."

Harry got on the bed.

"Remove your jacket."

Harry, again, hesitated. Bolt was in there, and he didn't want to—

"Will I have to repeat everything I say or do you actually have a few brain cells between your ears?"

Harry, slowly, took off his jacket. The second his arms left his sleeves Dr. Carrow grabbed the jacket and flung it at the as yet unacknowledged Hagrid, who grabbed it before it could hit anything.

"I see here that you have almost none of your required shots. You show no sign of being ill, so we'll skip that step and go straight to keeping you from _infecting_ others with the illnesses you, apparently, couldn't be bothered to defend yourself against."

Dr. Carrow spun around, unlocking a cabinet drawer and pulling out a series of needles. Harry glanced at Hagrid, wondering if he was going to bring up skipping the actual check-up. Bolt's hadn't been skipped, and even the Little Whinging doctors had gone through the motions even if they had ignored the rather obvious signs of malnutrition and abuse. But apparently the skipped check-up was more usual in Okoku, or something, because Hagrid stayed quiet.

"Alright, now I know in the hillbilly place you call a home your family—oh, I'm sorry, your parents are dead—your guardians don't care about whether or not you are a risk to society, but here in Okoku proper we do. These vaccines will keep you from infecting others with diseases, so I don't want to see you trying to get out of them. You will sit still, or this will take even longer, and I don't think either of us would like that, hmmm?"

Harry was vaguely offended. It was Dudley who squirmed, and wiggled, and complained. He had always known better, no matter what any doctor thought.

As Dr. Carrow methodically inserted the fourteen needles one at a time into Harry's arms the room remained completely silent. Fourteen seemed like a lot—Harry knew that there was some rule about the maximum number of shots at a time in Little Whinging—but perhaps Okoku had better working vaccines, and could do all at once. Dr. Carrow, unlike Dr. Fortescue, did not bother to explain what he was doing, or what purpose this or that particular shot was for. Harry didn't feel inclined to ask any questions, either.

Eventually, however, Dr. Carrow finished with the shots. Snapping off his gloves, he eyed Harry for a few seconds before spinning around to face Hagrid. "There is now no reason he would not be allowed to go to Spoinkperl. My receptionist will provide you with the necessary forms as evidence. There is no need to bring him any sooner than his 13th birthday, when he will need his next set of shots." The man stalked out of the room, leaving the two alone.

"I'm sorry about that, Harry. The Carrows aren't really known for being cheerful, but because of a court ord—well, anyway, they have to treat up to five walk-ins a day for free, so I figured this would be the best option."

Harry nodded quickly, but honestly didn't care at the moment—Carrow Pediatrics was not the kind of place one wanted to linger at. "Can we go now please?"

They ate burgers in the third floor cafeteria, with Bolt once more firmly by Harry's side, but after that Harry started to feel a bit ill, so the rest of the day was spent lying in bed, watching a nature documentary Hagrid had found for him on plains and the Pokémon (including Shinx) that could be found there, while Hagrid paced impatiently in the background, worried over Harry's less than ideal health.

Dumbledore, once Hagrid had gotten a hold of him, was quick to assure that it was only due to having so many shots completed at one time instead of spread over weeks or years, but that Harry should be feeling better by the next day or the day after.

Hagrid still seemed worried though, and even as Harry finally managed to fall asleep he heard Hagrid mutter, "I'll make this up to you, I promise."


	8. Harry and the Months Flying By

It took Harry two full days to recover from all of his vaccinations. During that time he and Bolt had lived the good life—they lazed quietly in bed, watched any nature documentary Harry could find on TV, and ate a selection of Tom's finest, and talked to Hagrid about anything and everything they could think of; if it weren't for Harry's upset stomach, the days would have been perfect.

Unfortunately, just as Harry had started feeling better, Hagrid had told him that he had to leave:

"I'm needed at Spoinkperl, Harry, but I'll still visit as much as I can. And don't worry—I'll make up for Dr. Carrow; I just need to think of the perfect present."

Hagrid had been gone by the next day.

Given that Harry was nearly eleven, that apparently meant the mysterious Dumbledore—as well as the Okoku population at large—felt that he was more than old enough to take care of himself, so Harry had simply been left in the room of the inn. Once a week Hagrid promised come over to chat with Harry, refill the small refrigerator with microwavable meals, and make sure that he and Bolt were still doing well.

But that left the rest of the week empty. For the first week Harry and Bolt had simply sat in the room, Harry being much to wary of venturing outside without Hagrid to try. But Bolt soon grew bored of the inactivity, and Harry was not far behind—for all that he had grown used to his cupboard under the stairs in Little Whinging, he had never been locked in it for longer than a few days at a time.

There was still the question of what to do, however—while the mind-boggling amount of freedom was nice and everything, Harry was not yet used to it. He frequently found himself tensing up, constantly worried that he'd forgotten to do something, or that he was behaving in a way that he wasn't allowed to—an overwhelming sensation that someone was going to be upset at him for a reason just out of reach. But Bolt was getting increasingly agitated, so just staying sheltered in the room wasn't working.

"Alright, Bolt," Harry said as he put on the cagoule Hagrid had bought him. "We're going to go out. Together." He'd chosen a day when it was raining, which would hopefully mean the streets weren't as crowded as they usually were—a sort of baby step into exploring Public City without Hagrid by his side.

A few minutes later they were slipping out the backdoor of the Leaky Shuckle, carefully pulling up the cagoule's hood as they finally exited the inn, both to keep dry in the rain and to avoid being recognized as the "Boy Who Lived" by any of the pedestrians wandering around Public City.

Bolt didn't seem to care about getting wet at all—he yipped excitedly, rushing out the door and waiting impatiently for Harry. He was more than ready to get out and move: inn rooms, unsurprisingly, weren't exactly the prime habitats for growing Shinx.

Harry was… less eager, but after double checking he was carrying everything he needed (ID card, what little pocket change he'd been given, Bolt's ball, and a packed lunch for the two of them), he finally stepped outside.

Public City was an incredibly large—and varied—city. For a while Harry and Bolt simply wandered around, gazing at the lives happening around them: the Grimers living it up in dumpsters, the mothers trying desperately to convince their toddlers to persevere through rainy-day shopping, the Pidgey and Pidove clustered under awnings, and the various runners, jogging past side-by-side with all sorts of Pokemon as they seemed to revel in the weather.

All in all, though, there did seem to be fewer people in the streets than there had been any other time he'd been outside—waiting for the rain had been a good idea, and Harry finally began to relax.

"Come on, Bolt! Let's race!" Harry laughed, sprinting down first one street, then another, with Bolt nipping at his heels. The two were soon out of breath (Harry especially), and as they came across another intersection Harry slowed to a stop, breathing heavily.

"That… was…. fun, Bolt. You… almost… had me." Bolt barked, then suddenly tensed, staring down the street they'd just arrived at.

Unlike the roads Harry had kept to so far, this one was dimly lit, and narrower than the others he'd been down. A slightly crooked sign positioned on his side of the intersection labeled the road as "Knockturn Alley." Unlike the street Harry was on now—Fisk Alley—as well as all the others he'd seen, Knockturn

Alley didn't have any lamps dotted along the street to give its inhabitants better vision. It was also more twisted than most routes: while much of Public City was winding and non-linear, Knockturn Alley seemed to twist like an Ekans, keeping much of the road out of sight by design. That said, what little of the alley could be seen before the first twist disappeared under the cloudy sky, the blur of rain, and the lack of lighting, leaving the entire road more a dark void of barely discernable buildings than any kind of path.

Not to mention, as Harry stared into it, something… else… seemed to stare back.

"Let's… let's go, Bolt."

Harry backed up, making sure to keep his eyes on the alley. Bolt whimpered, and was quick to follow, but made sure to keep himself between the alley and his partner. The two slowly walked backwards towards Diagon Alley. Just as Harry was about to turn around, though, a hacking laugh caught his attention. A woman was leaning out of one of the windows of the buildings bordering Knockturn Alley, about five stories up.

"Yeah, that's right! Run! This ain't no place for you! This is a place for power, for ambition, not for weak little boys with their weak little pets! That's right! Run!"

Harry ran, ignoring the rain pelting on to his face. Staying in the room at the Leaky Shuckle seemed a much better idea, now.

Harry and Bolt's next venture was not much more successful. Rather than heading towards the heart of the city, the two had headed in the opposite direction: to the wilderness where they both felt safest.

Unfortunately, neither had thought of what would be between the city and the wild: farms.

The first one he came across, Rowle Ranch, was so large its main building could barely be seen from its entrance on Route 66. For as far as the eye could see, instead, there were pens and pens of Pokemon: Tepig, Miltank, Bouffalant, Ducklett, Psyduck, Swirlix, … even Spoink, the namesake of the school, were penned together in crowded clusters.

Harry and Bolt stood frozen in front of the cages, unable to tear their eyes away from the cramped and matted Tauros in front of them—to say nothing of the pens on either side.

Just as Harry finally shook himself back into motion, even if he had yet to decide what to do about the sight in front of him, a shout caught his attention.

"Hey, what are you doing here?!" A man said, jogging towards Harry and Bolt.

"Um, I was just going for a walk." Harry said. The man was not immediately intimidating—he was of average height and build, and wore a set of equally muddy pants and shirt. That said, Harry knew what someone to be avoided felt like—and this man was clearly not someone he should be talking to.

"Well, you're not allowed to be here. Find a Pokemon elsewhere—these are for eating, not fighting. And if I see you trying to steal one, I'll make sure you're punished—" Here the man's face twisted from a frown into a smirk, "—whether or not the law agrees."

"Yes sir." Harry said. "We're leaving now." He immediately about faced, and fast-walked back towards the city, Bolt keeping pace right beside him.

It would take four days until Harry mustered enough courage to leave the inn again.

Harry and Bolt's third venture was, thankfully, much, much, better than those that had come before it.

The wild, the two had decided, was to be avoided until they found a better way to get to it. The right side of the city, given that that was where Knockturn Alley lied, was also a no-go. That still left half the city, though, and so that was where the two went. They began, once they'd left the hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley, with Ore Alley. It was fairly straight, if at about a fifteen degree angle from Diagon Alley and comparatively short, and from what Harry could tell it specialized in entertainment of all sorts. There were two theaters, three music stores, and something called "Contest Halls." While Harry couldn't afford to watch a movie when he could get free documentaries, and he certainly couldn't afford an actual instrument, the third provided… well, actually he had no idea of what the third provided.

Because he had never heard of Contest Halls before, Harry's first act was to pick up a free brochure from one of the Contest Halls.

Contests, the first page explained, were tournaments where Pokemon and their trainers competed in various aspects for monetary awards (as well as the "obvious" benefit of prestige.) There were five categories in the contests, the flier went on to say: each were defined by which "condition" the Pokemon was supposed to exhibit. Page two of the brochure also included a nice short quiz so _you_ could figure out which Contest _your_ Pokemon was most suited for. (Get started competing today!)

Harry, having nothing better to do, sat at the side of the alley and went through the questions with Bolt, and five minutes later could definitively say that Bolt was…

"—cool! That's nice, isn't it Bolt? Lots of kids in Little Whinging were always trying to prove that they were cool, and apparently you are without even trying!"

Bolt cocked his head.

"I guess you want to know what being cool means, huh?" Harry asked. To be fair, he didn't really have any idea either—in Little Whinging, being cool meant not really showing any emotion, not caring about anything, and having expensive clothing. Given that Bolt didn't exactly check any of those boxes, it was unclear what the "cool condition" meant for Pokemon—or for Okoku in general.

Harry read on.

"Okay, well, in terms of contests that you'll get a natural boost in the cool category, obviously, but outside of Contest Halls… you're better at physical attacks? What other kinds of attacks are there?"

Harry shrugged, but kept the brochure. Maybe he could find a public library and be able to look up what physical attacks, special attacks, physical defense, special defense, and speed were—Harry was sure it was something he was supposed to know, given the way the flier just assumed he was already familiar with the terms, so he knew he'd have to figure it out before school started: he wasn't going to be known as the stupid freak ever again.

After Ore Alley, Harry and Bolt headed into Culcher Alley. Unlike Ore Alley, Culcher Alley was much longer and more winding, and actually had multiple levels: there was the road on the ground, yes, but there were also stone and wooden and even plastic bridges that crossed this way and that, from this building to that, and even up and down, all over the alley.

Quite frankly, it was the most beautiful thing Harry had ever seen: there was no rhyme, no reason, no clear order… this alley would never, ever exist in Little Whinging. Harry wondered if he could by an apartment on the road when he was old enough—he'd love staring out a window at all of the people and Pokemon going left, right, up, down, diagonally…

Bolt barked with glee and bolted forwards. Harry quickly followed, but tugged the hood of his jacket up a bit more as he did so—he might like the scene of so many people out and about, but he knew he'd like it a lot less if a repeat of what happened at the Leaky Shuckle were to occur.

Culcher Alley was filled with restaurants and stores galore: a sort of (believe it or not) miniature version of Diagon Alley, despite its own incredible size. That said, unlike Diagon Alley, these stores were smaller, more… personal.

Harry and Bolt darted around the alley, trying to look at everything at least once. The less corporate aspect appealed to both, but what appealed to them more was the free samples.

In half an hour Harry managed to stuff two bars of soap, sixteen advertisements, a Jigglypuff shaped "stress ball" (which was really fun to squeeze), a handful of Pokemon treats for Bolt, and a free t-shirt from a (vegetarian!) restaurant that had just opened (Verry Berry) into the backpack Hagrid had bought for him.

Harry. Loved. Culcher Alley.

Harry and Bolt's fourth, fifth and sixth trips weren't nearly as successful as their third, but they also didn't dip nearly as low as the first and second. While he had a good time sampling some of the variety of food and free entertainment offered in the city, he was also able to conclusively say that there were no public libraries in Public City—in fact, he was fairly sure there weren't any in all of Okoku: public resources didn't seem to be much of a hit in the main region; public parks, recreation centers, and even public bathrooms were suspiciously absent from the city as a whole.

One of the accomplishments Harry was proudest of was how he and Bolt had managed to map out much of the city—Harry knew which streets to avoid, which shops had free samples, which alleys were just corporations, which ones were more geared towards residences… he knew which streets would be most crowded when, and where to go if he just wanted to be alone with Bolt for a while.

Best of all, he knew where the Pokemon were. He had found bird nests, and watched Trubbish mating dances, and played fetch with a couple of particularly jovial Rattata.

Public City finally began to feel like his home, like the place where he and Bolt belonged.

After the sixth "venture" Harry had stopped counting every time they'd gone outside. Instead they went exploring almost every day, spending their mornings running and jumping and generally exhausting themselves, before spending the afternoon and evening trying to find other Pokemon to play with.

It wasn't until Harry's birthday that their schedule changed again.

Harry was woken up at midnight by muffled cursing at the door. He tensed, but before he could start panicking Bolt woke up too and leapt out of bed, barking excitedly.

"Oh—Oh, hey there Bolt." Hagrid whispered. "Didn't mean to wake you up—"

"Hagrid?"

"Oh! Um, Harry, I woke you up too? Sorry about that. Um, you don't mind if I turn on the light switch, do you? I just, kind of, uh, hit my toe and…"

"Um, yeah, sure." Harry said.

The light flickered on, revealing Hagrid carrying a slightly dinged box, with Bolt jumping at his knees.

"I'm sorry about waking you up, Harry," Hagrid reiterated, "It's just, well, its not every day that your young man turns eleven, is it? So, I wanted to have a little something ready for when you woke up. You don't mind, do you?"

Harry sat up fully and smiled as broadly as he could remember ever having done so. This was the first time that he could remember that his birthday was remembered as more than just something to fill out forms. Hagrid had not only remembered, but he'd also gone out of his way to make sure that the day was special for Harry. "I don't mind." He said.

"Good!" Hagrid shuffled across the room, careful not to kick a still excited Bolt or knock over his package, and sat it down on the other bed. "Now, this isn't your present—I can't get you that until later—but, well, you mentioned that you'd never had a cake when you were deciding what to get for dinner once, and I figured that meant birthday cake too, and every little boy deserves birthday cake, so…"

Hagrid opened the box.

It was a cake—frosted brown with dark green letters spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY on its face.

"It's chocolate and shuca berry—I know that shuca's Bolt's favorite, and I double checked—he can have some, if he wants."

Bolt leapt onto the bed, and it was only Hagrid's immediate reaction which saved the cake from being demolished. "What do you think?"

Harry slowly slid out of his bed and stood in front of the cake. It was kind of blurry, now, and he didn't want to think of why, but when he tried to speak the words clung to his throat and it took three tries for his croaking answer to verbalize. "It's…it's fantastic. It's absolutely wonderful, Hagrid. Thank you so much."

He suddenly leapt at Hagrid, but the man caught him as easily as he had Bolt, and the three stood in warm embrace for a few seconds, Hagrid rubbing Harry's back and carefully not acknowledging the odd wetness on either of their cheeks.

Hagrid had found Harry when he'd had no clue what to do next, he'd brought him to safety, he'd helped him figure out how to make his way in this new and unfathomable world, and the entire time he'd treated Harry and Bolt with kindness, and respect, and like they both actually mattered—not just as human beings, but as friends. And now Hagrid had given him the one thing he'd always dreamed of: a birthday, complete with a birthday cake.

After they had all calmed down some, Hagrid cut each a slice of cake, and they sat on the beds eating the chocolate and shuca berry creation until Harry had finally felt to sleepy to stay up any longer. Hagrid had repackaged the cake, put it on the top of the dresser where Bolt couldn't reach, and tucked the boy and his friend back into bed, whispering, again, happy birthday.

When Harry awoke again a little after nine, Hagrid was quick to urge him out of bed—"we've got a big day planned, Harry, and we should start as quick as we can!"—and drag him to Verry Berry, the vegetarian restaurant that Harry, despite owning the shirt of, had never actually been to. After a delicious breakfast of pancakes, Hagrid ushered Harry back to his room, where Harry unwrapped his first birthday present—textbooks, paper, pencils, and all the other school supplies he was missing.

"Technically," Hagrid explained, "the supply list isn't released until tomorrow, the same time that the last acceptance letters go out, but Dumbledore said it was fine if you got the books a day early."

After that was the second present, which was honestly more for Bolt than Harry: an item called a 'training magnet', which helped Pokemon practice making their electric moves more powerful and precise.

"I know you don't have any electric moves yet, Bolt, but this'll help you practice using your electric power until you do, and then practice the moves once that happens."

It was the final present that Harry was most excited for, though. Hagrid had, after giving them the first two presents, disappeared out the door. Almost half an hour later he slowly opened the door, holding one hand behind his back.

"Are you ready for your last present, Harry?"


	9. Harry and his First Real Birthday

"See, after Dr. Carrow, I decided to get you your second Pokémon- you're allowed three in your first year, you know, and most kids will have at least two—your mother only had her Petilil, but your father had a Cyndaquil, Rufflet, and Poliwag, overachiever he was.

So, you know, I figured a Pokémon would be a great gift, and I went around to a couple of the auction houses where they sell all sorts of types, and I even managed to nab one of your friend balls, so that I could put the Pokémon in an apricorn ball, like you like, but I wasn't really having much luck until I went to the flying type market, which is where I found her."

Hagrid whipped out Harry's friend ball with a flourish, and with a single push released a plump, fast asleep, speckled Pokémon directly in front of Harry's feet.

"She kept on trying to escape her cage, you know, but she was bred in captivity, so the chances of her surviving in the wild were low, and I just, I figured..."

"What- what is she?" Harry asked. He squatted down to get a better look, but he'd never seen anything like her.

"Why, she's a Rowlet, of course!" Hagrid said. "Rare, they are, but pretty useful battlers—got a real knack for it, you know. Um, she's a flying and grass type, if that's what you're asking. Can even photosynthesize a bit, which makes her a bit cheaper to keep."

"She's beautiful." Harry whispered.

She really was—primarily covered in light brown feathers, with stark white ones covering her face and stomach, she had a small sprig of leaves which sprang directly from her neck, and a bright orange beak.

"What- what's her name?" Harry asked. He carefully reached out to touch her, but yanked his hand back at the last second—he wouldn't want to be touched without permission, and he figured she wouldn't either, particularly when she was asleep.

"Well, she doesn't have one yet. That's your job, you know. But you should think long and hard on it—you'll be calling her that for the rest of your lives."

"Why is she asleep?" Harry asked. Beside him Bolt had finally gotten over his apprehension and was now tentatively sniffing at the newcomer, but he, too, kept a safe distance.

"Oh, well that's 'cause she had a nasty habit of clawing at anyone opening her cage or taking her out of her pokeball otherwise. She'll probably wake up soon—oh, and here's her ball."

Hagrid dropped the friend ball in Harry's hands. He took it and scrutinized it carefully. It looked no different than it had before Rowlet was in it, still the same green and yellow and white ball he'd brought back from Ollivander's, but somehow it felt different.

Harry hadn't really given much thought to having another Pokémon outside Bolt, as silly as that sounded. But now that the option was right in front of him? Harry could swear he could feel that she was supposed to be a part of his team.

He really hoped that when the Rowlet woke up, she'd want to stay with him and Bolt. He wouldn't make her if she didn't want to, but something about her made him certain that she and him would get along.

It took another fifteen minutes for the Rowlet to finally wake up. Actually, Harry was fairly sure that she was faking for the last several—Harry had used a similar trick himself in the past, and while she was good, she'd made the mistake of going completely still even though when she was actually asleep she'd occasionally shift somewhat. Harry was careful not to point out that he could tell she was awake, though—he wanted to give her time to get her boundaries.

Nevertheless, she did eventually open her eyes. The flying type looked around slowly, ruffling her feathers as she took in her environment.

Harry was still kneeling directly in front of her, and Bolt stood sentinel by his right shoulder, still eying the new Pokémon with no small amount of curiosity. Hagrid sat on his old bed a bit away—apparently dealing with new Pokémon, be they caught or bought, was considered a rite of passage, and Hagrid made it clear that he would not interfere unless things got dangerous—which he doubted was possible, given how young the Rowlet was.

"Hi, um, Rowlet." Harry started. "I'm Harry, and, and this is Bolt. He's my best friend." The Rowlet blinked. Harry shifted awkwardly, then grabbed the Rowlet's ball. "This is... this is what I'm keeping you in. It's called a friend ball, and it's made out of an apricorn and I'm pretty sure being in one feels much better than a pokeball—I can't test that, though. Apparently, humans can't go inside either. Um, do you want me to, to put you inside it? Temporarily? So you can see what it's like when you're awake?" Harry figured that if she hadn't liked being kept in a pokeball in the past, then maybe showing her that what he would be keeping her in—if she chose to stay—was not that would be a good idea.

The Rowlet blinked, again, but slower. Harry wondered if that meant yes or no, but he figured he could just recall then release her really quickly. He carefully pointed the opening of the ball towards her, watching for a reaction, but she simply sat quietly, if tensely, and watched him in return.

He took a deep breath and pressed the button, absorbing her into the apricorn in a wave of light. After quietly counting to thirty, he pressed the button again.

"PReck!"

"Oh, I—I'm sorry! Did, did it hurt you, or-" Harry gasped desperately as the Rowlet lifted her wings in a clearly offensive gesture. But just as quickly as the Rowlet had been to express her displeasure she calmed down, settling on her haunches and staring at him once more.

Harry glanced at first Bolt, then Hagrid, at a loss of what to do next. Hagrid, at least, seemed fairly surprised by her reaction—after a few seconds he mumbled at a volume that was clearly meant to be too quiet for the Rowlet to hear "she was much more upset when they let her out of the pokeball they were keeping her in."

In a rush of air the Rowlet launched herself at Hagrid, only to be intercepted halfway there by the much larger Bolt, who tackled her with a growl.

"Careful!" Harry shouted. He fumbled for the button on Rowlet's ball.

"Let them fight it out," Hagrid advised. "They're going to have to learn some time, and neither of them are at all strong enough to do much damage to the room."

The Rowlet precked again and in a burst of motion flung a mass of vaguely leaf-shaped green energy directly at Bolt, who tackled her again in retaliation. However, just as Hagrid said, the blob of energy dissipated only half a meter or so after it started, leaving Harry's bed completely unharmed.

Harry found himself frozen with indecision. He held the Rowlet's ball in his hand, and with a click of a button he could end the fight without anyone getting hurt. At the same time, however, Hagrid's words rang in his head. He knew that once he got to Spoinkperl he'd have to let his Pokémon fight, and while Bolt acted, if anything, eager for the future promise of battling, Harry knew he was decidedly less prepared. If he let the Rowlet and Bolt continue, it would be as much for his benefit as their own.

In the end, the decision was not one he had to make. Bolt pinned Rowlet to the ground in seconds, and after a few last futile pecks, the flying/grass type finally gave up.

Bolt slowly backed up, growling softly, before, apparently assured of his victory, he suddenly shot off around the room, yipping in glee as he jumped from bed to bed to table.

Hagrid laughed. "A Pokémon's first win always stays with them! Look at him go!" But Harry was distracted by the obviously hurt Rowlet. He approached her slowly, carefully picking her up and setting her down on his bed as Bolt slowed to a stop by his side.

"Will she be okay?"

"Oh, of course! A bit of rest, a bit of food, and it'll be like nothing ever happened."

"Bolt's scars haven't disappeared." Harry rebutted.

"Well, yeah, but he went a long time without treatment to get those...wherever he got them. But you should have noticed that since we went to the Pokémon Center his scars have been disappearing."

Harry frowned—he actually hadn't thought to check, mostly because all of Bolt's cicatrices were covered by his fur. He knelt down beside the Shinx, carefully pulling apart the fur on his stomach where he remembered a series of scars were from when Bolt had tried to slide under the Dursley's fence.

Sure enough, it was only because Harry knew what he was looking for that he managed to see any marks, and even then the blemishes were so small that it was hard to believe that they had once been a similar angry red to Harry's scar—which had, unlike Bolt's injuries, not changed color since his own visit to the doctor.

Regardless, it didn't look like the Rowlet was bleeding, just exhausted, so he carefully pulled apart some of his birthday cake and tried feeding it to her. While she clearly, visibly, and loudly didn't enjoy the flavor, she nonetheless gobbled it up the second it was within her reach, before promptly hopping on top of Harry's pillow, settling comfortably in the very middle of it, and falling asleep, apparently perfectly happy to remain just where she was.

Before he could think of what to do next, Harry was interrupted by Bolt butting into his knee repeatedly.

"He wants a prize, Harry, for winning." Hagrid said helpfully. Of course, it would have been more helpful if he'd actually intervened when all of this was going on or told Harry more than a sentence or two of information at a time, but apparently Okoku was very into letting kids figure things out by themselves—by Hagrid's estimation he was being especially considerate of Harry's lack of a knowledgebase by explaining as much as he did.

Bolt butted into him again and Harry walked back to the table to pick up a larger piece of cake, which he placed on a plate on the floor. As Bolt attacked his reward with relish, Harry gave him plenty of scratches. He still wasn't quite sure how he felt about battling, but Bolt certainly seemed to like it and the Rowlet hadn't seemed to take her loss that badly. Moreover, Bolt _had_ won, and given that that was apparently all Spoinkperl cared about, it was good that Bolt had some talent, at least—Harry really didn't want to end up at the bottom of the totem pole; he knew firsthand what that experience was like and really wanted to avoid it in the place he hoped would end up being his home.

The rest of the morning passed in a much less exciting fashion, with Hagrid helping Harry set up his binders and folders for the impending school term. After a brief lunch from the Leaky Shuckle, though, Hagrid had Harry return Rowlet (who had woken up but was pretending to still be asleep) and Bolt. He said he'd gotten an idea of what to do for the afternoon, but he wanted it to be a surprise.

Hagrid led Harry up Diagon Alley, down Parsh Alley, past Ecksp Lane, and through Prymar Alley, until they finally arrived at Fyzik Alley. Lined with wide multi-story buildings, unlike most of the streets in Public City this one wasn't transected by multiple floors of walking paths. Instead, each and every building stood entirely on its own. There were four of them in total—two to a side—and each and every one had, in massive, oversized, letters, the words 'Fitness Center' fixed to their sides. In fact, with the exception of color, the main difference between all the buildings were the words directly on top of 'Fitness Center.'

Hagrid led Harry into one that was labeled "Pyroar Fitness Center", and was primarily painted in shades of orange and red, a sharp differentiation from the blues and browns, greens and greys, and yellows and blacks that made up the rest of the street. The inside was at least as ostentatious, painted in the same colors but with more patterning and the addition of a mainly grey floor with red and orange highlights. The atmosphere was additionally helped along by the pervasive smell of sweat, metal, and, oddly enough, burning in the air.

The atrium itself wasn't much to look at—a bored teenager was manning the front desk, where Hagrid showed his card to get entrance (Harry got in as a guest), and there was no other furniture, only four doors—the entrance they'd already come through, a door helpfully labeled 'employees only', a door with the symbol of a woman, and a door with the symbol of a man.

Hagrid led Harry through the latter, which opened into a locker room which was even more... aromatic... then the room preceding it.

During the entire trip up to this point, from leaving the inn to arriving at Pyroar Fitness Center, Harry had been pestering Hagrid incessantly over what they were doing, but Hagrid had kept mum. Still, the location was a bit of a giveaway, and as they passed through the locker room, an adjacent hallway, and a staircase, Harry started to get increasingly worried.

He may have not stopped Bolt and Rowlet from battling, but he was quite sure he was not yet ready to instruct either of them.

As it turned out, though, his fears where unfounded. After pushing through one last set of double doors, Hagrid and Harry arrived not at an arena but at a long, nearly empty room, which had a series of benches placed a meter or so from the walls on the right and left sides of the room. The walls themselves? They were completely covered in windows, which overlooked the very arenas that Harry had been so worried about finding himself in.

"I figured," Hagrid explained, "that you might like to see what Pokémon battling looks like—you know, to get a feel for it."

Harry nodded absent-mindedly, slowly crossing the room while staring out the windows. The platform overlooked six separate arenas, and four of them were currently in use. It was the last one he saw that interested him the most, if only because the participants were clearly his age.

There were four people and two Pokémon in the room. Harry was fairly sure the two adults were the parents of the two kids, who were the ones actually shouting the orders to the Pokémon in front of them.

One of the battlers was a girl with long dark hair. As she was facing away from him, Harry could tell little else. He did know what kind of Pokémon she was directing, though: a Combee, which, according to his nature documentaries, had to mostly worry about Ursaring in terms of natural predators and were known to be, as a whole, fairly week, although some of the females would eventually evolve into Vespiqueen, who had a much better reputation.

Harry squinted at the arena, trying to see if this Combee had the tell-tale red marking which denoted females, but the distance was too much to tell.

Across the battlefield stood a boy with slicked back blond hair. He carried himself with the kind of self-assurance which only came from constant reinforcement, and from what Harry could tell, the boy, with the help of his Pokémon (a small bluish-purplish creature Harry didn't know the name of) seemed to be winning.

In fact, just as Harry thought that, one of the purple Pokémon's attacks (a sort of stream of needles) slammed into the Combee. The flying/bug Pokémon's rapidly beating wings faltered, picked back up, then failed outright, dropping the Combee onto the ground.

Harry winced in sympathy, but the girl simply returned her Pokémon and sent out the next without hesitation. This one was another Harry recognized: a Phanpy, the pre-evolution of the Pokémon Donphan that Harry had learned were fond of rolling down hills at full speed as a method of attack.

Across the field the boy did not seem overjoyed about the new opponent. His mouth, which had formed a smirk as the Combee had to be recalled, fell back into a more neutral expression, but even at his distance Harry could tell that the boy was actively trying not to frown more than he already was. Behind him, the man who could only be the boy's father shifted and frowned as well.

Up on the platform Harry finally took a seat on the bench facing that particular arena. He was interested to see wear the match would go—if he had to guess, the bluish-purplish Pokémon was probably a poison type, and his nature documentaries had stressed how poorly poison types did against ground types.

In the arena the Phanpy trumpeted with its trunk, and the girl shouted her first order. Across the field the boy shouted another out to his own Pokémon. Instead of attacking as Harry had expected, though, both Pokémon held their positions. In fact, neither of them looked like they were doing anything at all—at least, from his angle.

"They're setting up." Hagrid said, sitting next to him. Harry looked at him questioningly—while his favored programs had done much to expand his knowledge of the number of Pokémon and their types, it had done little to teach him how to professionally battle.

"Setting up is like... well, most Pokémon have moves that don't directly attack your opponent—like your Bolt has Leer, or Charge. And if I remember rightly, your Rowlet has Growl and Defog, which are both called set up moves because they kind of make the other Pokémon weaker, or your own stronger, instead of attacking—Leer makes it harder for the opponent to take hits, Growl makes it harder for the opponent to deal hits. Things like that."

"And people will use those first? And then attack?"

"Well- it's not really that simple." Hagrid replied. "Some Pokémon are better suited to using more or less set up moves than others. And some people are more or less suited to it to. For instance, Gryffindor—I have told you about the houses, right Harry?"

"You talked about them a bit when we were hiking to Route 66."

"Good. Well, anyway, Gryffindor—my alma mater, you know, and your parents, too—they're kind of known for not using many set up moves. Slytherin, on the other hand, are thought to use them the most."

"How about the other two houses?" Harry asked.

"Oh, well they're known for battle styles too. Ravenclaws are known for treating battles like math equations, while Hufflepuffs... let's see... well, I guess you can say they're known for unpredictability—generally most of the poorer battlers are Hufflepuff, but there are always a couple that rise to the top, and all of them like doing random things in battle. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't."

Harry nodded. Below them, the boy's Pokémon had finally fainted, and he'd promptly replaced it with another—a black and red cat, which Hagrid immediately took note of.

"Oh-ho! Look, he has a Litten. Good animal, that. Watch out for it, Harry—the Litten line are natural predators of the Rowlet line."

Hagrid and Harry stayed on the platform watching battles until dinnertime. Harry tried to watch the battles with younger participants, if possible—he wanted to get an idea of what his classmates were like before meeting them. That said, what interested him the most about all of the battles was how much care was shown by many, if not most, of the trainers to their Pokémon. While they were quick to withdraw any who fainted, those who were still on the field when the battle was over were quick to be cuddled and hugged and given treats, regardless of whether they won or lost. Not only that, but the Pokemon clearly enjoyed battling. All in all, it wasn't nearly as bad as Harry had first feared.

After a quick dinner from a street vendor, Hagrid had taken Harry back to the inn in a rush—apparently, he was late for some sort of meeting. Before he left, however, he'd had Harry sign a paper officially turning over the ownership of Rowlet—apparently Hagrid wasn't allowed to have her for more than a day, but Hagrid didn't actually explain why before he'd gathered Harry and the now released Bolt into a large hug, warned Harry to take care of himself, and disappeared out the door.

Still.

Harry could honestly say it was the best birthday he'd ever had.


	10. Harry and the End of Summer

"Thanks!" Harry shouted, waving at the owner of Verry Berry with a takeout dinner. It was his last day in Public City until Spoinkperl, so he'd decided to treat himself, and the owner—Florean Fortescue—had apparently agreed, even giving him some free sorbet to go along with his sandwich and chips.

Harry pressed the takeout bag to his body and began to dart through the streets, flitting past storefronts and front doors, and nodding at various passerby as he did. In the last couple months he'd spent enough time exploring to get a good sense of the city, and in that time he'd managed to befriend many of its residents and get a better sense of the overall culture of the region.

Okoku was, in a word, weird. It and Little Whinging had split well over 400 years ago, according to the history book he'd bought, and since then their way of life had only diverged even more.

In both children were raised by their parents, yes, but in Little Whinging they started day school at five and didn't stop until eighteen, at which point they would begin working at one of the various businesses in the sub-region or stay at home, raising their own kids.

Okoku did it a bit differently.

Children generally lived with their parents year round until they were eleven. In terms of education during that period, the upper class would hire tutors, but poorer people would generally pool their money together and hire one tutor per town—a sort of quasi-school, but unlike in Little Whinging not state funded and certainly not mandatory.

Kids were also generally kept away from the city—there were plenty of exceptions, of course, but 'clean environment' was considered very important for growth, and the Trubbish, Grimer, Pidove, Pidgey, and Rattata infestations, as well as the pollution that had caused them? Apparently that did not constitute a 'clean environment'.

At eleven children would start Pokémon training; those that could afford it went to Spoinkperl. Those that couldn't were generally sent to one of the numerous cheaper schools scattered around the region or, at worst, given a captured Pokémon to learn how to take care of on their own.

At seventeen, a year younger than the age of adulthood in Little Whinging, you would participate in the massive Rose League, and your placement there would be added to your ID. Then you would go apply for various internships, apprenticeships, or jobs (depending on which career you were interested in) and, like in Little Whinging, the cycle would eventually repeat.

As for why the Rose League was so important? Why it dominated education, dominated resumes, even dominated how others identified you?

It all came down to the use of Pokémon. Little Whinging tried, sure, and in some places they even overtook Okoku, but as a rule the amazing number of ways Pokemon could be used to make life simpler meant that there was no mechanical, no technological, no psychological replacement.

So being able to understand Pokémon? Being able to get them to listen to you? Being able to know their weaknesses and how to overcome them?

Priority number one.

After all, it was a basic certainty that while how much math, or reading, or technology, or creativity you would need in order to make a living was up in the air, you would almost definitely be using at least one Pokémon to make that living.

It was, all told, a very different environment than Little Whinging's, and while Harry wasn't entirely sure if it was better as a whole, he did know for a fact that he and Bolt had vastly improved lives in Okoku, so that was that.

He'd be competing in the Rose League.

So for the past month or so Harry had been visiting the Pyroar Fitness Center as often as possible to watch battles. While children were generally kept out of the city, the imminent new school year had brought his future classmates flooding in from far and wide, so his options in terms of what battle to watch had actually grown quite a bit since Hagrid had first taken him.

He would always make sure to cover his scar—he'd made that mistake once, on August 6th, while exploring the eastern part of the city. He'd nearly been mobbed by well-wishers, each and every one of them absolutely desperate to personally thank him for a reason he still couldn't fully understand. It was only his quick thinking and complete willingness to squirm behind dumpsters and into half a meter gaps between buildings that had him escape without any of them finding out where he was staying.

So, beanies. His new best friend.

His dress code decided, Harry would then press himself into a corner of the room, the one which had the last people watching, and study the battles which were taking place below. Over the weeks he was fairly sure he'd seen a good chunk of his future classmates. Hagrid had, in one of his visits, told him that there would be about forty students entering their first year (a bit lower than normal, but then they would be the children born in the last year of a several year war), and he'd taken note of about fourteen kids he was fairly sure was his age.

Given that, he'd spent quite a bit of time memorizing the various styles of the fighters. If battling was so very important, he wanted as much leverage as possible.

But he never, ever actually went down and fought any of them. He'd occasionally set Hedwig, as he'd recently named his Rowlet, and Bolt against each other, yes, but the idea of actually _battling_ them still made his stomach clench. So instead he had spent the month watching and learning in that way.

Still, as August came to a close and Harry shut the inn's back door behind him, he couldn't help but think he had been at least somewhat successful in his preparation. He'd read over his textbooks twice, devoured every Pokémon documentary he could find, and watched as much battles as possible. He knew he was still behind many of his future classmates— memorizing the type chart and its list of exceptions was harder than it seemed, and that didn't even touch on how far below the exercise requirements he was, or how little of the anatomy textbook he'd understood.

And actual battling?

Most of the time, when he had Bolt and Hedwig spar, he became so paralyzed with fear of them being hurt that he could barely open his mouth. It didn't matter how many times he set them against one another, it didn't matter how many times they clearly enjoyed the fighting, any time he saw blood, any time he heard a yelp of pain he'd retreat into himself all over again.

So that part he was fairly sure he wouldn't do well in.

Harry sat cross legged on his bed eating his dinner as he watched a news channel's report on a recent break-in at Public City's bank. He leaned against the backboard, taking comfort in Bolt at his side and Hedwig perched by the window. He may not be top of his class, but with his friends by his side he was sure he'd be able to improve enough to be happy, no matter where he ended up.

The next day found him standing at the train station bright and early. He'd already put on his Spoinkperl uniform, not wanting to deal with it on the way there, but he'd also kept his beanie on to preserve the last few hours of vague anonymity he had left.

The rest of the station was mostly empty, which was to be expected. The train to Spoinkperl didn't leave for another three hours, but Harry had woken up at six with, as a phrase he'd heard went, Butterfree in his stomach, so he'd decided that maybe an early arrival was best.

Now, though, he wasn't so sure. The parents and children milling around the station kept on looking at him oddly, out of the corners of their eyes. He didn't know if it was because they'd started to guess who he was, or because they were curious why he was the only one there alone, but either way he didn't like the attention and the lack of a crowd made it impossible for him to avoid it.

He shifted the strap of his backpack and slunk into the bathroom—not the greatest hiding spot, he'd admit, but an easy and non-suspicious way to hide from the eyes.

There was a row of mirrors in the bathroom, in varying sizes and conditions. Most of them were cloudy squares of reflective glass, and all had a number of stickers and odd stains covering at least the edges of their surfaces.

Harry stood in front of the nearest one.

He was smaller than he expected—he didn't really make a habit of looking into mirrors, but he'd still thought he was at least a couple inches taller than he looked. His hair was crap, too—he pulled off his hat and tried to press it down, but the difference, if there was one, was too slight to be noticeable. She shoved the beanie back on his head, before examining himself again.

His new glasses were nice. He'd gone and gotten them from an eyeglass store a week after his birthday, and intentionally bought one that he thought looked professional; the frames he chose were rectangular and black, but quite skinny. They didn't really seem to suit his face, but maybe he'd grow into them.

His eyes, too, looked pretty. At least, that's what he assumed. In Little Whinging blue eyed, blond haired children were considered the most adorable (Dudley, apparently, being a prime example), while brown or black haired, brown eyed children were considered 'normal'. Harry figured that green eyes were somewhere in the middle, but he'd been the only one to have his eyes in Little Whinging, so he wasn't entirely sure.

He liked them, though. Green was a nice color.

The rest of his face was… well, he didn't think he was ugly, at least. And Hagrid swore he looked exactly like his father, so that was a plus. He wondered if this was what his dad had looked like on his first day of Spoinkperl. He kind of doubted it—he couldn't see his dad looking as wary, or as skinny (his cousin's aunt Marge had always told him he was a skinny little runt of the litter—she ran an orphanage, and kept on encouraging his uncle to send him her way to 'straighten him out.)

All in all, though, he looked… plain, almost. Like the kind of face that you'd pass by without noticing. Harry was fairly good at noticing faces, built as a defense mechanism more than anything else, but even he would occasionally skip across faces without realizing, hours later, that there had in fact been someone sitting in the restaurant besides the staff when he entered.

Just then the bathroom door slammed open. A short, rail thin boy who Harry didn't recognize burst through, looking decidedly peaked. It took him a few seconds to notice Harry, but that was mostly because he'd shut his eyes the second he entered and sunk to the ground, breathing heavily.

"Are… are you okay?" Harry asked.

"Oh!" The boy yelped. "I didn't know anyone was in here. I'll—I just needed to catch my breath. Um, I'm Terry. Are… are you waiting for the Spoinkperl train, too?"

"Yes." Harry said. He inched closer to the other boy. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"NOPE!" The boy shouted, his voice several decibels higher than Harry expected. "Sorry, sorry. It's just… I'm the first in my family to go, you know? And I'm just so worried. No one in my family's ever been able to do that well in the Rose League, and this is—this is my chance. I've been spending all of the past month being told by my mom, my dad, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, hell, even relatives I didn't know I had, that I needed to do my best, to make my family proud, and it's just, it's been getting to me, alright?"

Harry sank down on the floor next to him. "It's fine, I promise. I'm scared too—people said my parents attended, but they died when I was little and I wasn't really, um, exposed to many Pokemon or battling up until a couple months ago. I don't… I don't even like battling, honestly."

That shocked a laugh out of Terry. He'd been fairly sure it would—saying you didn't like battling seemed analogous to claiming that you weren't a fan of sweets. "We make a right pair, don't we?"

Harry nodded. "How about this? You help me, I help you. We'll figure it out together."

Terry huffed, then grinned. "Agreed." They shook hands, then dusted themselves off. Terry was still in his street clothes, and said he'd like to stay in them as long as possible—the starchy, sweaty fit of the wool pants and sweater as well as the cotton shirt was apparently something to be avoided until absolutely necessary, something Harry made a note of for future trips.

Once suitably neat and calm, the two boys slipped back out of the bathroom. Harry had, to his utter disbelief, been in the bathroom for nearly half an hour before Terry had burst in, and it had taken another fifteen minutes until they'd left again. The consequence of this was a much more crowded station, one that they managed to meander across with little issue or attention.

Terry introduced Harry to his parents ("Oh, call me Patricia!", "Mr. Boot is fine."), as well as his two sisters ("It's Kate, not Katie.", "I'm four! How many four year old Janes do you know? I know three!"), before retrieving his suitcase from them and saying goodbye (the Knight Bus would be coming in half an hour, so they had to get going.)

After that the two boys stuffed themselves in a corner bench, pulling out their textbooks and muttering last minute advice to each other about what they'd heard ("I heard that you should avoid the Memorization teacher at all costs.", "Some people on Diagon Alley were talking about how they hadn't had a Ranking teacher last more than a year in decades—they said they were beginning to run out of candidates.")

It wasn't until about fifteen minutes before the train was set to arrive that the scene began to change. The station had been becoming crowded over the last hour or so, stuffing itself full of children and teens and adults alike, all of them talking over one another with little to no care of the effect on others. Harry's head was beginning to ache, in fact: he'd never been good at dealing with 'sensory overload', as one of the books he'd read had called it.

In those last fifteen minutes, though, the noise seemed to get a whole lot worse. People were streaming in through the station's entrance, now, cramming themselves into any nook or cranny they could find. A number of parents had begun outright sobbing over their child leaving, smothering their tweens and teens in unwanted affection.

People were craning their heads to look down the tracks, too, somehow believing despite all evidence to the contrary that if they just squinted enough that they'd be able to see the train coasting down the tracks.

"Do you think… should we try to get to the front?" Terry asked. Harry was hesitant; getting past all of the bodies seemed like a Herculean effort, and at the end of the day it's not like there wouldn't be room on the train for them, no matter how long they waited.

"Can we wait? At least a little bit?" Harry asked. Terry gazed at him for a second, before nodding. Harry was sure that in the time they'd already spent together the other boy had realized his issues ran a bit deeper than simple fear of not living up to expectations, but despite that he hadn't waivered in his friendliness, even suggesting playing a quiet game of chopsticks when he realized that the noise was making it hard for Harry to concentrate.

Soon, though, even Harry realized that it would be necessary to begin the plunge forward in order to make sure they didn't have to rush when the train actually arrived. Harry realized was lucky, in a way, when they started to push ahead—all of his possessions had fit into one slightly cramped backpack, while Terry had both a backpack and suitcase to maneuver through the crowd. That said, by the time the train arrived they'd managed to make it halfway there. As the train pulled in completely they redoubled their effort, Terry actively forcing his way past doting families and combative students alike and yanking Harry behind him all the while.

A few pushes, shoves, and muffled curses later, they were on the train and in a compartment.

"Hah! I knew we could do it!" Terry said. He slammed the door behind him firmly. "Arceus, we're awesome." Harry snickered.

"I think you're giving us a bit too much credit; everyone else is doing the same thing as us, after all."

"Well, well, well, Harry, now you're just giving us too little credit. We made it here faster than half of Spoinkperl, at least—and that includes sixth and seventh years and everything!" Terry fished a water bottle out of his backpack and slouched onto one of the booths, looking suitably satisfied with himself.

"I guess you're right." Harry said. He gazed out the window; they'd chosen a compartment facing the station, and the mass of forms still seemed like as large as it had been when he'd been going through it.

"Now all we have to do is sit back and relax." Terry said.

"Well, that, and actually do well." Harry replied. He stared at a blond haired man who was facing the train. It was the same blond man as the father of one of the first battlers he'd watched, the one who had seemed incapable of smiling until his son had completely destroyed his opponent. He was smiling, now, though, standing in the same way uncle Vernon's boss did; utterly self-assured of his position in life. As the train jerked forward, a halting movement which snapped Harry back into the reality of the passing time, he wondered if he'd ever look like that—so utterly and unflinchingly resolute in their status that he wouldn't even get out of the way of the 'lesser beings' that were streaming in a rush around him.

The train began to move.


	11. Harry and the Sorting Ceremony

The train ride went, Harry supposed, about as well as any train ride could go. He'd never been on a train, actually— Little Whinging had a monorail, but that was a bit different, and besides, it was only half built and Harry had never actually been inside, just passed it once when Uncle Vernon had decided that Harry and Dudley needed to see how an honest man made his living and brought them along to work for exactly one half-day (the rest of the day was spent at home, trying furiously to come up with a way to blame Harry for Dudley pulling the fire alarm after becoming bored.)

So. It wasn't exactly like he'd had much to compare it to.

But the seats were surprisingly comfortable and Terry, for all his intermittent panic attacks, was a good seat mate, and they'd only had to open the door five times in the whole trip—the first to let in a short red headed boy who had taken one look at the textbooks they'd spread out opposite them and promptly turned around, a girl who had actually looked almost eager when she saw the same set up, only to disappear because "I really need to help Neville find his Goomy, and anyway, I'd really prefer people who know what to expect—I'm the first in my family to attend, too, and you can never be too prepared."

After that was a lady with a cart of sweets, snacks, and sodas of all form, but neither Terry nor Harry were particularly willing to part with what little money they'd begun with, so the interaction was quite quick. Fourth was noticeably longer—the same blond boy from the gym had leered over them, looking for Harry Potter, and when Harry reluctantly admitted that that was him, refusing to believe it to be true. (There were, apparently, videos of a dark haired, green eyed boy several inches taller than him who wore his scar prominently on display and commanded Charizard, Nidoking, and Machamp alike as if they were all Igglybuff.

That particular revelation had been a bit of a shock, and Terry warned him that it would probably be worse at Spoinkperl— his family didn't actually own a television, but most others did, and each and every one of them had likely seen at least one of the episodes of "The Boy Who Lived", which purported to tell his life over the past three years.

The last time they opened the door was so that Terry could change in peace, because an announcement had just come on warning that the station was only ten minutes away.

Spoinkperl loomed over them the second they stepped off of the train. Terry was jittery again, unable to sit still and constantly glancing around as if expecting someone to jump out and attack them at any moment. He'd explained that how students were sorted into the houses was always kept secret, how it was rumored to be the final test for admission.

Terry didn't want to fail.

Harry kind of doubted it, though. His uniforms and books and et cetera had been quite expensive, and he thought it a bit unlikely that the other kids' parents would be okay with them being kicked out at the last second, but he also knew that kids were supposed to be sorted by their battle styles.

He didn't have a battle style.

And Spoinkperl was looming over him, an ugly combination of stone castle and modern skyscraper that someone forgot to finish, and as he and the rest of the first years were shuffled to the side to let everyone else pass he couldn't help but note all of the large battlegrounds that dotted the valley next to Spoinkperl, outlined in chalk or wood or metal. He was sure that the rest of the grounds were equally decorated.

Terry had his Pokeballs out and was rubbing each nervously between his hands. His own catch, a Corphish, he'd been training for almost half a year now, and once he'd been accepted into Spoinkperl his older brother, Kevin, who was fourteen, gave him his own Nosepass to help Terry's chances of doing well. They were called Snickers and Mustache, respectively.

Harry passed his thumbs over his own balls, but kept them in his pocket. A number of other students had theirs out, but they were all pokeballs. Given Ollivander's reaction, Harry wanted to wait as long as possible before revealing his friend balls.

Hagrid, who had wrapped Harry into a short hug and whispered good luck the second he saw him, was ordering them all into a series of boats which would be carried over the water by trained Jellicent. A girl with incredibly bushy hair wanted to know why; Hagrid told her that it would give them the best view of their new school.

Harry could see their new school from dry land. He thought it more likely that they wanted to give the other students more time to settle in, first.

Hagrid shouted a command and the Jellicent began to move. Harry glanced at his boatmates. There was Terry, of course, still much too pale and twitchy, as well as the bushy haired goal who had begun interrogating Hagrid about what Spoinkperl was like the second she saw him. She'd tried to do the same to Harry, too, when it became clear that he and Hagrid knew each other, but Harry had ignored her until she stopped persisting.

The only other person in the boat was a small red headed girl who Harry didn't recognize, and who looked as afraid as Harry felt, even if anxiety didn't roll off her in waves like it did Terry.

From the view of the lake Spoinkperl was, if anything, even more terrifying. He was sure some people would consider it magnificent—its turrets jutted into the sky, its length stretched the imagination, and the more recent add-ons, for all that they did nothing to blend in with the stone construction of the castle, gleamed under the moonlight, their windows and cement exterior the pinnacle of what was possible in architecture.

But all Harry could focus on was how the lights seemed more wary then welcoming. Harry was used to the bright white fluorescent lighting of Little Whinging. He'd become accustomed to the yellower lamps that Public City employed. But Spoinkperl had windows which shone out with blue and green and orange and purple and every other color of the rainbow. The lights streamed out of some of the windows, too—glowing Pokémon made their way in and out of the building without care, causing some windows to dim and others to unexpectedly brighten.

Harry was reminded overwhelmingly of the books in Little Whinging, the ones that warned of the danger posed by relying on Pokémon too much—by relying on them at all. Here, though, that seemed to be the only option. From transportation to lighting to education, Pokémon were the center of it all.

He clutched Bolt' and Hedwig's balls tighter, reminding himself that they were real life evidence that the dystopia described by Little Whinging wasn't accurate, but it still took him three tries to step off of the boat and into Spoinkperl.

The first years were led into the atrium by a woman named Professor McGonagall. She was tall, and stern, and had a thick accent that Harry hadn't heard before. He would've thought it a speech impediment except that one of his nature documentaries had talked about how just as people who were raised in different places spoke with different accents, many Pokémon seemed to make different sounds based on where they grew up.

She left them in the atrium and disappeared into a set of double doors. The first years stared at each other. Harry shoved Terry between him and the crowd.

It didn't really help.

What helped less, however, when a swarm of red and blue... _things_... came careening down the hall, straight at them. Even more disturbingly, they were _talking._

The children gasped and stumbled back. Apparently even the Okoku natives weren't used to them.

"Oh-ho-ho! What do we have here?" One of... them... asked.

"We're first years." A boy said.

"Ah! I forgot we were getting a new batch!" Another said.

"How'd you forget? We only have three years' worth of memories to maintain, anyway!" A third exclaimed.

"What... what are you?" Harry asked.

"They're Porygon, of course!" The blond-haired snobby boy sniped.

"That's what we are!" Said one of the Porygon. When it... noticed... the majority of their expressions, it expounded, "we had a general outline of our brains and personalities input into the man-made Porygon Pokémon at the time of our deaths. Using these bodies, we can live on for hundreds more years!"

That was... kind of disturbing, actually. But at the same time... "so, um, my parents' personalities could be in a Porygon?"

"Doubtful!" One of the other Porygon snickered. "Becoming a Porygon takes years of preparation and quite a bit of money, and besides, there are generally only one or two Porygon created a decade, so it's unlikely your parents got to be the lucky few."

"Who are you, anyway?" Another Porygon whirred.

Thankfully, before Harry had to answer the double doors swung open, and Professor McGonagall shooed the Porygon inside to 'watch the ceremony'. After a brief speech, she led them into the Great Hall too.

The room lived up to its name. It was easily the size of the Dursley's residency, with four long tables stretching about two thirds of the way down its length and the fifth, where the staff were sitting, about half the length of its width. The rest of the area was simply empty space, but what filled it was astounding: behind, between, and in front of every table dozens of different Pokémon sat, perched, or splayed themselves on the floor. Some were squeezed on certain trainer's laps, while others were small enough to nestle on one of their shoulders. Still others, particularly those owned by the upper years, were far too large to do anything but sit loyally behind their trainers.

He'd somewhat been expecting it, of course—the very long rulebook which had come as part of his required supply list had made it clear that the Great Hall was one of the few places that one of your Pokémon could be let out whenever you wanted, so long as they behaved—but it was one thing to know it as fact, and another entirely to see it in action.

Harry and the rest of the first years began to inch their way between the two tables closest to the middle—Ravenclaw on one side and Gryffindor on the other, if he remembered the colors correctly—slowly following Professor McGonagall's determined stride as they took in the sights around them.

"I've never seen so many Pokémon in one place." Terry whispered.

"Even nature documentaries don't show this many at one time." Harry whispered back.

All too soon, however, they'd made it to the front of the room. There, hovering about a meter and a half or so above a stool, was a Pokémon that Harry didn't recognize. Clearly, though, given how he and everyone else had been led directly to it, it was important.

"What kind of Pokémon is that?" Harry whispered to Terry. Before he could answer, though, the rude bushy haired girl from the train interrupted.

"It's a Medicham, of course. A... fighting/psychic type, if I remember correctly."

Harry reluctantly nodded his thanks for the information, but before he could ask if she knew why, exactly, they were standing in front of it, Professor McGonagall cleared her throat.

"I'd thank you all to quiet down, now." She said. "We'll begin the sorting as soon as you're quiet. Misters Weasley, that includes you. And you, Mr. Proudfoot. Don't think I don't here you snickering. All right, is everyone quiet? Good. Then could Miss Hannah Abbot please come forward."

A pink skinned girl with pigtails reluctantly stepped forward, releasing her grip on the red headed girl with braids who she had been standing beside.

"No need to be reluctant, Miss Abbot. I assure you that the sorting is quick and painless, no matter what any of the older students may have said. Now, just sit on the stool—yes, under the Meditite—quickly now, I assure you that your classmates are quite hungry and we have about eighty of you to get through—alright, good."

Professor McGonagall suddenly went quiet, and the rest of the hall followed suite. Even the slight whispers and shuffles that the Deputy Headmistress had overlooked earlier stopped.

Then—

A yellow light, directly above the Meditite's head.

"Hufflepuff!" Professor McGonagall shouted. The girl scrambled off the stool and rushed to the table to the right—or the left, Harry supposed, from her perspective—of the Gryffindors. A resonant roar began from that table, but before it could really get going Professor McGonagall cleared her throat again and called the next name.

It didn't take long for Harry to understand why, exactly, Professor McGonagall was pushing for speed so much.

Terry, with his annoyingly early name of Boot, didn't have it so bad, because he'd managed to get settled in at the "Ravenclaw!" table fairly early, but by the time they had clearly passed the halfway point Harry knew almost an hour had already passed.

Shortly after that, though, his name was called.

From Abbot, Hannah to Perks, Sally-Anne, each and every child before him had been fairly efficiently shuffled to one of the four tables. Some took longer than others; Longbottom, Neville, had been nearing the four-minute mark when the red light finally appeared, while Malfoy, Draco had barely gotten the chance to sit down when a green glow hovered above the Meditite's head, but all students had been fairly easily sorted.

Nonetheless, as Harry mounted the stairs to the stool, he couldn't help but feel the pit in his stomach growing larger and larger. He glanced up to see Terry smiling at him in support, but all he could think was—

 _What if they realize I don't belong? What if they send me back to the Dursleys? What if they take Bolt and Hedwig away? What if a glow never appears? What will Hagrid think? What will Terry think? What if this is a test, and I've somehow already failed?_

He sat on the stool.

The world went dark.

Then, suddenly, it burst into light again. He was in a forest of some kind. He could here a waterfall in the background, but he didn't know where. And from behind him—a noise, a growl, almost.

He knew he was in danger.

But what to do? Should he try to hide, maybe find out some more information? Should he attempt to trick the monster, convince it that he'd gone some other way? Or should he attack it head on?

He spun around, trying to find where the growling was coming from, but he couldn't see the danger.

He couldn't even tell if it was a Pokémon or a man.

Harry grit his teeth and forced himself to stop and think. Okay, this was probably an illusion—the edges of his vision were too fuzzy, his senses too muddled, for it to be anything but. He could probably try to crack it, to get out, but what if that meant he failed the test?

He looked around at the forest floor. There was a branch near his feet, small enough to pick up but large enough to offer at least some protection.

He grabbed it.

It'd be best to... to provide some sort of distraction, though. Keep the danger from becoming a straight-up battle. He was next to a pile of rocks, so he scrambled up and hid himself as well as he could, taking off his school sweater and throwing it a fair distance away.

Then he waited.

After it became clear that he was done making preparations the monster didn't take long to attack.

Harry still couldn't tell what it was—its form shifted by the minute, constantly cycling through all sorts of shapes, from Pokémon to man to what Harry could have sworn was a tornado—but it went straight for his sweater.

Just as Harry was about to hit it over the head with the stick, however, just as he was about to pass the test...

He stopped.

This whole experience may just be in his head, but the... _thing_... had given Harry no reason to attack it, and so Harry found himself incapable of being the first to strike.

Instead, insanely, Harry dropped the club.

"Hey! Hey!" He shouted.

The monster turned around. Its form was beginning to solidify, now; it was almost human, but with the mane of a Luxray, and it crackled with odd green electricity which coursed through the air as if it were water.

"Hey..." Harry said again. "I'm, um, I'm Harry. Are you... are you okay?" He had no idea why he just asked that. Really, he was fairly sure this was all just his imagination, and even if it wasn't, ' _are you okay?'_ Really? That's what he goes with.

The monster rushed at Harry on human legs, and let off an odd cackle, but made no attempt to hit him, so Harry tried again.

"I... I'm not going to hurt you, okay? Well, at least, so long as you don't hurt me. Can... are you supposed to understand me?"

The thing cocked its head, then growled again when Harry moved his hand closer to it.

"It's okay. I just... I just wanted to touch you. Can I do that?" Harry asked.

The monster stopped growling, and Harry reached to its mane again, but before he could touch it he found himself back in the Great Hall with Professor McGonagall calling out "Hufflepuff!" beside him. He blinked rapidly and, almost in a stupor, walked towards the Hufflepuff table.

 _What was that?_


	12. Harry and the First Night

"So, how did your sorting go?" The first year sitting across from him asked around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. All the first years had finally been seated, and after a few words (nitwit, blubber, oddment, and tweak, of all things) the feast had begun, with masses of all sorts of food appearing without warning on each table.

Because it had not been clear who, exactly, the other first year had been addressing, Harry kept quiet. The boy sitting next to him, an amazingly freckled boy with curly brown hair, answered instead.

"It was terrifying! I thought for sure the murderer was going to kill me!"

"You saw a murderer?" A very tan girl with wispy dirty blond hair shrieked. "All I saw was one of the Mightyena that attacked my parent's farm last year!"

"It plays on your fears, you know." An older girl sitting down the table said. "That's how it decides what house you go to—by how you react. Everyone shows some aspects of all the houses, after all, so I guess the founders decided it'd be best to see how we'd react in a particularly terrifying situation. A bit barmy, if you ask me."

"Well, no one did!" A first-year boy, who had been sorted after Harry, snapped. "And, anyway, it's not like it was _that_ scary. I mean, there certainly wasn't any reason for anyone with half a brain to take more than a few seconds to actually do something—I even managed to scare it back." He added, eying Harry in a clearly disparaging manner. "That said, I'm sure some people were paralyzed with fear for much longer than that."

"Lay off him!" A red-headed girl, one of the first to be sorted, snapped. "My aunt said that sometimes if someone takes a while, it's because they could fit into lots of houses, and it's hard for the Medicham to decide!"

"Sure, but the rest of the time it's just because they're too much of a loser to do any more than scream like a little girl, and based on how close _the boy who lived_ looked to feinting when the Medicham finally decided what house was stuck with him, I think we all know which set he belongs to."

Harry flushed, but didn't speak up. He knew there was no point—the boy (Zacharias?) had already made up his mind about him, and there was nothing Harry could say that would change his mind. That said, based on how the red-head (Susan?) was gearing up, this was not a lesson that everyone else had learned.

"What _did_ you see, anyway?" The tanned girl (Leane? Lena? No, Lynne) asked.

"I... it never really, um, had a specific form. Just... it was just really creepy." Harry said. He didn't want to talk about this. He pushed the peas on his plate around—he'd managed to force down two rolls and a couple spears of asparagus, but he really didn't feel like eating, either.

"How about you?" Lynne asked Zacharias. "You were sorted really quickly. I bet your mind came up with something stupid, like a mime or spiders or a clown." At the last possibility Zacharias suddenly flushed, causing Lynne to burst out laughing. "A clown, really?"

"Oh, like a Mightyena's any better!" Zacharias said.

"'Course it is." Another boy, whose name might've been Earnest, spoke up. "I saw a tornado, myself, which I fought using a Lugia I imagined into existence, and Justin saw a rampaging Gyarados which he defeated by making it smash against the rocks, but basically everything's better than a clown."

"At least a clown's better than nothing "specific!" I mean, who's afraid of nothing?!" Zacharias shouted back.

"Only the bravest among us are afraid of the unknown," an older boy said, having had climbed out of his own seat much further up the table to squeeze in among the first years while the conversation had been taking place. "And if Harry here is really that brave, then imagine how dangerous the unknown must have been to take that long to defeat."

"You—you were supposed to defeat it?" A blonde-haired Hannah Abbot, the first sorted, whimpered, voicing Harry's own thoughts.

"Kind of." The older boy said. "Mostly you just had to show how you'd fight it—would you go fully offensive, like a Gryffindor, try to trick it in some way, like a Slytherin, try to use your knowledge of how it behaves, like a Ravenclaw, or act in any other way, like a Hufflepuff. I mean, of course you're probably going to do some of all of those things, but it's whatever behavior's the most predominant that'll get you in one house over the others."

"Which is a really nice way of saying that I got into this house for being stupid." One of the other first years, a particularly glum looking boy named Wayne Hopkins, returned. "I mean, if we thought logically, or cunningly, or if we just fought well at all we'd have ended up in one of the other houses. We ended up here because we didn't do well enough to go anywhere else."

"I'll have you know that plenty of very smart people have come from the Hufflepuff House!" The older boy said. "Ministers, Rose League winners, Headmasters... Hufflepuffs have gotten nearly every major award there is!"

"They've also gotten the least of every major award there is!" Wayne sniped back. "Out of the past 100 Rose League winners, 12— 12!— of them came from Hufflepuff. Meanwhile, 23 of them were from Ravenclaw, and another 32 each were from Slytherin and Gryffindor. Even just in Spoinkperl, the House cup almost always goes to Slytherin or Gryffindor. Can you name the last time Hufflepuff won? Can you?"

The boy's words began to slowly fade into the background as Harry's head began to whir faster and faster, trying desperately to understand what he'd already learned before forcing more information into his brain.

There was a lot to untangle.

First, he was supposed to fight the monster. He hadn't, which apparently meant he'd ended up in the 'duffer's' house, but apparently even the other Hufflepuffs had fought back. Still, even if he put aside that he'd apparently gotten away with messing up his sorting, other words kept swirling in his brain, keeping him from calming down, focusing on the world around him.

His mind almost unwillingly turned to Headmaster Dumbledore's first words, and the connections they were beginning to form in his mind: nitwit—Hufflepuffs were considered idiots by many, blubber—Gryffindors, who sat next to Hufflepuff, were considered to have no idea how to talk, only act, oddment—Ravenclaw, positioned on the other side of Gryffindor, were very much talked about as if they as a group were just a bunch of weirdos, and tweak—Slytherin, the final house, and the one thing which Harry had heard no less than once a week since the beginning of his Public City exploration was how prone Slytherins were to any crime, including drugs.

…

He was probably overthinking. Harry tried to think about something else.

Well, there was the persistent fact that was buzzing in his brain: it was really hard to ignore that he was currently attending a school in which it was considered perfectly acceptable to take eighty or so eleven-year-olds and put them through a traumatic event and then send them off to eat without any other reaction whatsoever.

Maybe that wasn't the best topic either.

And then there was at least one of his housemates seemed to genuinely hate him.

…

Maybe he should just stop thinking. He decided to watch a Volbeat that was helping in lighting up the Great Hall above him, instead. It seemed to be trying to hold a conversation with the Porygon, but because none of them seemed to be able to speak anything other than English it wasn't very successful. Harry wondered if the Polygon had been able to communicate with it before the human's brain had been impressed over it, if it had been alive before they were written over.

You know, maybe the negativity came from him, rather than what he was looking at.

"...ry. Harry!"

"Hm?" Harry asked, suddenly realizing that the older boy sitting beside him had been trying to get his attention for the last few minutes.

"Are you okay?"

Harry was about to ask what he meant when he realized that all the plates and utensils had been cleared, and that everyone on their table was already halfway out the door, making his distraction very, very blatant.

"Yes, I'm, I'm fine. Just a bit... lost, really."

The older boy sighed. "Yeah... Hagrid asked me to keep an eye on you. He didn't tell me much, but..."

"You know Hagrid?" Harry asked. The two stood and began making their way to the rest of the 'Puffs.

"Sure! He's really knowledgeable about all sorts of Pokémon, you know. I mean, the Professors are too—they're great—but Hagrid _gets_ them."

"Yeah, he's awesome." Harry said. Hagrid had always gone out of his way to be nice to not only Harry, but also Bolt and Hedwig, and he wouldn't forget that kindness. "Um, I'm sorry, but what's your name?" He felt ashamed for asking, but if the boy had already mentioned it Harry certainly had not been able to remember it.

Thankfully, the boy only laughed. "Name's Cedric Diggory. You can call me Cedric. I'm a third year."

"I'm Harry, um, Potter. I'm a first year." Harry said. Cedric laughed again, but Harry could tell it wasn't meant maliciously. The boy just seemed to have a genuinely happy demeanor, one that made someone feel calmer just by being around him. It was surprisingly similar to Hagrid's, which Harry guessed was why they got along.

They started down a staircase, still just far enough behind the rest of the group that Harry wasn't constantly on alert.

"So, you looking forward to training up your Pokémon?" Cedric asked.

"Not really." Harry found himself admitting. "I don't think I'll be any good at battling."

"Well, you'll never know if you don't try, right? What Pokémon _do_ you have?"

"I have a Shinx and a Rowlet which Hagrid gave me."

"Nice! I've got a Tranquil, Machop, Shellos, and Horsea myself. I'm hoping to have them all evolve by the end of the year, and I'm pretty sure I can get Thor—that's my Machop, and Nertous, my Shellos, to evolve by November. That's the plan, anyway."

"Do you know when my Pokémon should evolve?" Harry asked. He'd tried to learn that on his own—theoretically, it was in his memorization textbook (helpfully titled "Pokedex: Abridged. Years 1-3"), but there had just been so much information on each page, information which he had no idea how to interpret. He'd managed to figure out that more battling made Pokémon evolve faster, but that was about it.

"Let's see… I think both should be evolved by the end of the year. Actually, they should both probably evolve pretty soon, at least if you want to be on track at the end of the year."

"Oh." Harry said. They were in front of the Hufflepuff Common Room door now, but it looked like it would be a while until they'd actually be allowed to enter—one of the prefects had begun to rattle off all the rules, and apparently didn't care that half the audience was ready to pass out, or that all the rules were in the rulebook: she was going to finish the entire list, no matter what.

"Hey... are you sure you're okay?" Cedric asked.

"I just..."

"It's the battling, isn't it?" Cedric said. Harry nodded. "You know what, meet me at breakfast this Saturday. There's going to be a small fair with information booths for all the clubs then, and I'll show you around."

"Do you think I'll find something I like?" Harry asked.

"Sure." The Common Room door finally opened. "There's plenty of different clubs. I'm on the Quidditch team and in the Explorer club myself, and I'm sure you'll find something that interests you too."

"Okay." Harry said. He was beginning to nod off, fully ready to crash the second he was led to a bed.

"Good. See you in the morning—and don't forget to get to Breakfast early, so you have time to pick up your books and unpack before the first class." Cedric said. He turned down one of the hallways with a large '3' over the entrance, and Harry followed the rest of the first years into the one labeled '1', which had two card-swipe locked doors on each side. Harry was directed to the first one on the left, and told that he would get his own ID card to access it himself the next day, at breakfast. His exhaustion ensured that he didn't care.

He did, however, take the time to familiarize himself with the room, at which point he noticed an issue.

There were five beds spaced throughout the rectangular room, each with a bedside table and small dresser at the end of the bed. Suitcases and backpacks were placed on each bed, with a small placard of the first year's name propped on the nightstand. His was apparently the one immediately to the right of the door, pressed against the wall.

But that wasn't the problem.

The problem was the other boys in the dorm.

Harry doubted he'd have any issue with Oliver Rivers, whose name placard placed him directly opposite Harry's bed, or Roger Malone, who was positioned on the other side of the door, against the left wall. It was Wayne Hopkins (who was opposite to Roger) and Zacharias Smith (whose bed was directly across the door) who Harry wasn't as happy about sharing the room with; a boy who seemed to seriously despise the house he was placed in and another who seemed to despise him in particular weren't exactly what he would call ideal roommates.

"Oh, great, I'm sharing a room with you." Zacharias sneered. Harry grimaced, but didn't try to respond—staying quiet never really helped when he was bullied in Little Whinging, but neither did talking, and he didn't have the energy to do that anyway. The rest of the boys said nothing, too—Roger had barely spoken five words since being sorted, and while Oliver was noticeably chattier, even he didn't seem like he was particularly eager to get into it this late. Wayne was still moping about being sorted into Hufflepuff, so he too stayed silent.

Harry and the other boys quietly changed and brushed their teeth in the adjacent bathroom, whose door was positioned between Wayne and Roger's beds. Zacharias, on the other hand, simply unpacked all his stuff, a task the rest had put off to the next day, while making snide comments about how he was absolutely sure that someone would end up taking something of his, and how he'd be keeping his eye out for thieves.

Harry ignored him and went to bed. He may have been poor, but he certainly wasn't desperate, and he doubted anyone else in the room was, either. Zacharias probably (hopefully) knew that, too, and was just spoiling for a fight. Well, let someone else do it—Harry preferred sleeping.

Harry and most of the rest of the first years (including Zacharias, but excluding Wayne, who was still in bed last he checked) had arrived at the Great Hall by about 7:30, which had given them about an hour and a half to collect their ID badges and class schedules, eat, unpack, collect supplies, and make it to their first class (Anatomy with Professor McGonagall, apparently, which they shared with the Slytherins.)

Given that Harry knew for a fact that he could do all of the above in less than half an hour, with the possible exception of actually finding the classroom, he felt no reluctance in making his way to the Ravenclaws the second Terry arrived. It took him a while (none of the upper year's Pokémon seemed particularly inclined to move, and because first years weren't allowed to have them out until they passed a test at the end of the weak, many of the older students had taken advantage of the extra space and had their Pokémon spread out, which made it even more difficult), but he managed to make his way to the end of the Ravenclaw table and settle in next to Terry.

"Congrats on being sorted!" The other boy grinned. He was loading up his plate with nearly every bit of food in reach, and showed no inclination of stopping. Harry himself had had some toast, beans, and berry pancakes, but nearly everything else was made of Pokemon so he'd left it at that. Terry was... less discriminating, and his plate was now almost half as tall as it was wide.

"You too. Ravenclaw's lucky to have you." Harry said.

"Let's hope so, right?" He shoveled his first forkful of food into his mouth.

"Yeah." Harry said. He opened his mouth to say something else, but hesitated—would Terry think he was weird?

"You've got that look in your eye, so just ask whatever you want to ask. We're in this together, right?"

Harry nodded and took a deep breath. He'd been thinking about this all morning, and he needed help coming up with an answer. Terry was his best bet.

"What do you—do you think it means if the thing you fought against, to be sorted, I mean, isn't... normal? Isn't natural? What does it mean if it doesn't even exist?"


	13. Harry and the First Day

Terry, in the end, had no idea what Harry's odd sorting meant. His fear was fairly straightforward—his entire family, then his entire town telling him how much he let them down. Simply put, he feared not living up to expectations. Those of his dormmates who had admitted their own fears (a Beedrill attack, no one noticing them, knowing nothing, being considered stupid…) were also quite straightforward and easily recognizable.

Harry's… creature, and his lack of awareness of what it was, was very unusual.

Before they had too long to talk it over, however, Harry was called back to his table to collect his ID badge and syllabus and then it was time to rush back to their dorms to get everything they needed for for their first class.

Harry's was Anatomy, with the Slytherins.

The first thing he noticed was that the classroom was odd. It was larger than he'd expected, for one, and had all the desks positioned in a wide half circle around the middle of the room. On the teacher's desk sat a small purple Pokemon that Harry did not recognize but which none of the other students reacted to. Instead of a blackboard the back wall was empty, and there was a small podium in the middle of the room.

Just as Harry had taken a seat between Oliver and Hannah the Slytherins arrived and filled the rest of the room. Harry tried to smile at the classmates who had sat themselves directly across from him, but they sneered and turned away.

"There's no point." Wayne said.

"What?" Harry asked.

"In trying to be friends with them. Slytherins like themselves and only themselves—they think we're Dunsparce, honestly."

"Why?"

" 'Cause, you know, they're bigots." Wayne said.

"One fourth of everyone here is a bigot?" Harry asked, but before Wayne could reply Professor McGonagall opened the door at the front of the classroom and welcomed them.

After attendance and a brief overview of expectations—one essay a week, a test a month, and a final at the end of the year, as well as homework for every class—Professor McGonagall began by having them draw out simple diagrams of one of their Pokemon and extrapolating as to why they looked that way.

Harry chose Bolt.

His artistry was… lacking, but he guessed that the four limbs allowed Bolt to move faster, and that his ears were as large as they were because it was hard to hear with all the fur. He had no idea why Bolt was blue, though.

The class ended with each student handing in those sheets, as well as a list of all the Pokemon they had.

Unfortunately, however, the next class was one that Harry was dreading: Memorization.

The classroom, at least, reminded Harry of Little Whinging, so the familiarity was nice. The door to the hallway opened at the back of the room, and rows of desks, each evenly spaced apart, that took up the majority of the classroom. A chalkboard and a series of pull-down charts currently rolled up on either side took up the front wall. The teacher's desk stood directly in front of the chalkboard, but it was empty. Two additional doors took up wall space on opposite walls parallel to the desk. All in all, it would not have looked out of place in any hallway of St. Grogory's.

Harry and the rest of the Hufflepuffs, as well as the Slytherin first years, all filed in and chose desks at random. Harry chose a desk about three rows back, near the right edge of the classroom. He knew from experience that too far forward or back drew too much attention, and he _really_ didn't want to be noticed until he'd caught up with the rest of the students at least.

The left door banged open.

A man, who Harry recognized from the teacher's table in the Great Hall, strode in.

He was tall, and wore his black hair oiled back. His face looked as if it had never been taught how to smile, and his grey sweater and black pants looked completely unblemished. His entire appearance, in fact, seemed to encompass the idea of perfect grooming and self-control.

"Silence." He said. Any last murmurs which had not dissipated when he'd entered disappeared. "Let's begin with a warning: you will never be allowed to have your Pokemon out in this class. I don't care if it makes you feel better, if it is the most quiet Pokemon ever—this class is not about foolishly battling and hoping for the best.

This class is about ensuring that when it comes to it, you will know enough to win.

If you, somehow, manage to do well in this class, then you will soar to the top of the Rose League. Most of you will quit before sixth year, however, because your lazy little minds can't bear the amount of effort it takes. Instead, you will brashly rush into battle, without any understanding of what you are doing, and _you will lose_. I can teach you every type, every move, every injury. Most of you will fail to understand the use of that knowledge, but let's see if one or two of you actually manage to live up to my expectations, hmm?" Without waiting for an answer, he swiped up a clipboard from his desk and began attendance.

He sneered at nearly every name, and outright glared at Harry's.

And then he began asking questions.

"We'll begin by making sure you actually know the bare minimum. Avery! Fire is super-effective against what?"

"Bug, grass, ice, and… steel, sir."

"Correct. Five points. Smith! What is rock not very effective against?"

"Fighting, steel, and, um, ground—no!—rock."

"Correct. No points. Potter! What is ghost normally effective against?"

"I… don't know, sir."

"Five points from Hufflepuff. Let's try again. What is fairy super-effective against?"

"Um, steel?"

"Ten points from Hufflepuff." Harry could feel the other 'puffs glaring at him, and Smith's look seemed nearly venomous. "One more try. What is electric super-effective against?"

"Ground! Um, electric types are super-effective against ground, sir."

"Fifteen points from Hufflepuff, Mr. Potter. It seems fame isn't everything." Professor Snape whipped around and yanked down one of the charts, revealing a chart with Pokemon types on either axis, and seemingly random numbers filling out the inside.

"Copy down the chart. You will be tested on this next class, as it is assumed you already know it. I would suggest that a few of you stop laying about, and start actually putting in effort now that you are actually here."

The rest of the class was spent in silence.

Harry managed to mostly ignore the looks of his classmates and professor alike, and diligently copied down the entire chart. He paid special attention to the fairy, ghost, and electric types, and started practicing filling out a chart the second he'd finished copying down the official one. His classmates seemed to be doing similar.

By the time lunch arrived Harry was dreading the next memorization class. It wasn't the material, exactly—Little Whinging had stressed memorizing material, and even though the material was different Harry was still all to familiar with the methods needed to do well in that class. The problem was the other similarity Memorization had with Little Whinging—the type of teacher.

When Harry was eight he'd been assigned to Mrs. Burns' classroom. Mrs. Burns was a relatively new teacher, but one that Harry had already known just by reputation.

She. Was. Evil.

The year before his class she'd banned children from leaving lessons to go to the bathroom. The rule was only changed after a boy had finally just stood in the front of the classroom and wet himself.

When Harry was assigned to her Dudley had been, too, but the Dursleys had made sure he was transferred to a different teacher. They, of course, hadn't bothered to do the same to Harry, but Mrs. Burns hadn't known that and had thought they'd simply been unable to remove both children from her class. She'd dealt with that perceived slight by picking apart each and every answer he gave, by being functionally blind to the bullying that occurred, to never, ever giving him even the slightest bit of leeway.

He'd gone home crying more times that year than ever before, or ever after.

Professor Snape? He was just Mrs. Burns in the skin of a man. Harry already knew it didn't matter how much he knew, how hard he tried—any slight, perceived or real, would be treated as the worst offense ever committed. ("I thought I told you to copy the chart, Potter. Why is your hand not moving?" "Stop looking at your housemate's work, Potter. You will not be able to do that during an exam.")To be fair, though, it didn't seem to just be him—the majority of lunch was spent being reassured by older students that there was nothing he could do, and that he shouldn't worry about house points at all—no house but Slytherin had won since Snape had taken his position, so it was more important for Harry to make sure he could do well in the government-administrated tests at the end of each year than to try to please Snape.

(This was, to be fair, a nice change—Harry had had to spend hours cleaning the classroom in order to convince Mrs. Burns to not make him fail.)

Following lunch the first year Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors headed to Survival, which was, quite frankly, not about Survival. It seemed to be more accurately a class about _everything_.

"—and that's just Semester one! By the time you graduate you should be comfortable with bills, taxes, fire safety, cooking in a kitchen and on the road, gardening, hunting and when and where it is legal, laws in general, proper health—oh, it seems as if we only have an hour left. Let's get to the test—don't worry, don't worry! Ungraded! I just want to know what you already know!"

This class, at least, was one Harry didn't have to worry about. He knew how to garden by four, clean a humidifier by six, put out a grease fire by eight, and repair simple broken electronics by ten. He did still have to learn about taxes and laws and things, of course, but compared to not knowing how many types there were or why a Pokemon would be blue (Cedric was kind enough to tell him that the color acted as a warning of danger during lunch), feeling ahead felt nice, and it was especially good that the class was taught by his head of house, Professor Sprout, who seemed to be a genuinely good person.

The next class, however, was one he was dreading.

"What's wrong?" Roger asked as they neared the classroom. Harry didn't exactly know what made him ask, but given how he felt, it certainly wasn't good.

"Oh, is widdle Harry going to faint?" Zacharias taunted.

"I'm fine." Harry said. He tried to make his feet work.

"We're going to be late." Roger warned. The Hufflepuffs walked as a group, that was one of the house rules.

"Yeah, yeah, just… give me a minute." His housemates shuffled around, shifting slowly towards the door but constantly glancing back at him to see when he would start to follow.

Behind them the Ravenclaws rounded the corner and streamed around them, rushing to get the front seats. Harry was still frozen.

"Harry? Harry? You okay?" Terry asked. He'd stopped, apparently, and was now standing directly in front of Harry and waving his arm in front of his face. Harry absent-mindedly noticed his hands shaking, which seemed to have caught Terry's attention.

It was one thing to try letting Hedwig and Bolt battle in his own inn room. It was quite another to be expected to train his Pokemon to attack each other with increasingly dangerous moves. Training, he knew, wasn't technically about battling, but it was still _Training_ to battle. It wasn't Survival, it wasn't Memorization, it wasn't Anatomy. It was Training. Training to _hurt_.

"Harry, Harry, remember—we're not allowed to have our Pokemon out for the first week." Terry whispered.

Harry jerked. That was right; they had to take a test on Thursday, and they'd be told the following Saturday whether they'd passed the first time (it was supposed to be a very simple test, but if you did manage to fail then you'd be made to retake the test every day until you passed.)

"Right, right. Let's… let's go in." Knowing that he wouldn't be made to train his Pokemon in causing pain, at least that day, seemed to have been enough to slow his heart, and he managed to force himself into a seat beside Terry shortly before the bell rang.

Despite his rather quick recovery, it was a disturbing reminder of just what exactly this school was all about, and how hard it would be for Harry to manage it.

Professor Flitwick was an exuberant man that kind of reminded Harry of the stories about Christmas elves. He didn't stand still for a single second as he went through the syllabus and described the course objectives, instead speeding back and forth across the front of the classroom, constantly stopping and asking if anyone had any questions.

The class was, as Harry had feared, primarily about teaching one's Pokemon about how to injure other Pokemon, but Professor Flitwick made it clear that, with few exceptions, they would also be expected to teach their Pokemon a 'status' move. "It all matters on your Pokemon of course—one year I had a student who only had a Beldum, so that was a bit of a struggle, I'll admit. However, it is also important to note that your grades won't simply be on your Pokemon knowing certain moves—I will also test how quickly your Pokemon is able to put that move into action, switch between moves, and tell the difference between your command to do that move versus another command or nonsense.

Following Training came the last class of the day: Exercise. It was run by professor Kettleburn, who only (for reasons Harry and his classmates were too wary to ask) had a single arm and half a leg left. He and one of his Pokemon, a Skuntank named Stink, spent the entire period (after, thankfully, allowing each child to change into different clothing) chasing the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors around the field in ever widening loops, while screaming the syllabus at them (he'd apparently forgotten to print them out, but thought telling them while they ran would make them remember it more… for some reason.)

Basically, surprisingly enough, the Exercise class was about Exercise, and five days a week, for one to two hours every day, they would be made to run, jump, lift, stretch, and kick alongside their Pokemon—the Professor fully believed that working alongside one's Pokemon made them perform better, so they would be getting a work out too.

Dinner followed immediately after Exercise class, but the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors alike decided it wouldn't matter that much if they were a bit late, and instead any Spoinkperl resident who looked out of the windows facing the field would see yellow and black and red and gold starfishes spread across the entirety of it.

Dinner, when they did arrive, was spent trying to stuff their mouths while looking appropriately chastised by the prefects warning them not to be late again.

Harry, by the end of it, was entirely exhausted, and despite curfew not being until nine, immediately went to bed and passed out.

It wasn't really that bad of a day, though. It was nice knowing that none of the classes gave homework, even if it meant there was less free time than he was used to, and most of his teachers seemed great. But Harry still dreaded the next week, because as much as he was looking forward to seeing Bolt and Hedwig again, he was not looking forward to having to order them into battle.

This, of course, was an issue for another day, but it was an issue nonetheless, and one that gave him a restless sleep despite his exhaustion.


	14. Harry and the First Weekend

Thursday's test was almost frustratingly simple. Part of that was Harry's fault—it'd be the first test about Pokemon he would ever take, and he'd gotten almost manic in his revision so that he'd do well on it.

Which meant the actual test was a letdown.

It was only one page long, for one—front and back, admittedly, but it still wasn't much. For another, it was almost entirely about safety and the like, ensuring you knew the steps to take if your Pokemon tried to attack someone, or if they got injured, but each question was multiple choice and the right answer was generally so easy to pick that Harry was fairly sure he could have successfully passed in Little Whinging.

So yeah, Harry was fairly sure he was going to be battling next week.

Understanding the issue, that after class that Friday Terry pulled him away from the Hufflepuffs (after a bit of arguing over whether any of them were actually allowed to go off on their own) and pushed him outside.

"Where are we going?" Harry asked.

"I know you're still fussed up about battling, so I figured out something that may help." Trevor said. He led Harry down to the edge of the lake, and then the two of them looked around for a few minutes until the Ravenclaw finally found what he was looking for. "Look!" He said, pointing a few meters into the lake.

There, dancing in and out of the water, were a group of Ramoraid. As Harry paid them more attention, however, it became clear that they were not just dancing, they were outright fighting—thrashing and biting and doing all they could to harm the others.

Harry flinched back, but kept looking.

The Ramoraid kept fighting.

Terry kept urging Harry to keep watching.

It took a while, but eventually Harry figured out what he was supposed to see. For all that the Ramoraid were hurting each other, they also seemed to be having fun—sometimes one that got hit particularly bad would disappear for a minute or two before arriving back, and when not immediately attacked seemed to outright mope until it was.

One poor Ramoraid, smaller than its brethren, kept on trying to attack the group, but was weak enough that it was outright ignored, and kept on darting about the group, trying to find someone willing to take it on.

It wasn't clear at first, at least not to Harry, but they, like his own Pokemon, seemed to outright enjoy attacking one another. It was equally clear that they were allowed to leave and return whenever they liked, and that the vast majority of them (not all, because he could see glints of blue streaking across other areas of the lake) chose to battle.

"I… I know my Pokemon will probably enjoy it, but at the same time… I don't know if I will."

"You don't have to." Terry said, then seemed to rethink himself. "That came out wrong. What I meant was you don't have to become eager to battle yourself, you just have to become excited to let your Pokemon do what they want. Don't focus on liking battling—focus on making your Pokemon happy."

Harry considered this. Fighting was still something that he considered best to avoid, but if he looked at it through the lens of wanting his Pokemon to be happy (and it was becoming increasingly clear that Pokemon needed to battle for that to be possible) he could see himself at least staying in the same room as the battle.

"…Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. I mean, I'm still not great with it, but… I'm definitely going to try. And the second I'm allowed to let Bolt and Hedwig out, I'm sure they will help me too."

"Good."

"Good."

They went back inside.

At breakfast Harry's first Saturday he sought out Cedric, just as the older boy had asked him to several days before.

"Hey, Harry." He said. "Ready for the fair?"

"Yes. Um, what's… what's the fair like?"

"It's just a bunch of stands." Cedric said. "Technically it doesn't start until ten, but I'm helping run the Hufflepuff Quidditch booth, so I've got to arrive early. Want to come with, or just wait until everyone else is sent?"

"Go with, please."

Cedric and Harry made their way to a group of booths set up haphazardly outside the field nearest to the school. There were about twenty of them, in total, and they all looked to be varying levels of well made. Some of the best looking ones were four booths located near the front, each decorated in stripes of different house colors.

"Alright," Cedric started as they came upon the yellow and black booth, "this is where I'm set up. Now, I know you don't really want to do any extra battling, but it'd still be cool if you tried out to be a seeker."

"A seeker?" Harry asked.

"Yeah—oh, right, I haven't explained Quidditch yet, have I?"

"No."

"Okay, it's pretty simple, really. There are seven members of each team. There's the coach—that's what I am, who decides who does what, the two beaters, who fight in teams of two against the opposite team, the three chasers, who try to 'tag' the other team's Pokemon, each tag giving ten points, and then there's the seeker. The seeker doesn't fight at all, they just race against the other team's seeker to catch a Ninjask. Oh, that's a type of really fast Pokemon—you have to be really quick to be able to capture it with the Sports Ball."

"Do I capture it forever?" Harry asked.

"Oh, no—that's why you use a Sports Ball. It isn't a permanent capture, just for the purpose of the game."

"I guess I can try." Harry said. It was really hard to say anything else—Cedric just looked so eager.

"Great! Here's the tryout sheet. They'll be held next week."

Harry signed his name, then Cedric began pointing out what the other booths were advertising for.

While some of them—chorus, for instance, as well as formal battling—weren't particularly interesting to Harry, others seemed far more fascinating. Cedric had pushed Harry towards the Explorers club, but their meetings lasted almost three hours, and Harry wasn't sure if that was for him. The Pokemon Fan Club also seemed cool, at least until he got to the booth… the 'club' was just sitting around and calling Pokemon 'adorable'. Pokemon Breeding Club wasn't even open for anyone under 6th year, and Pokemon Contest club just measured how cool, beautiful, cute, or tough the Pokemon looked.

The gardening club, at least, was an easy choice for Harry to make. Their meetings happened in the evening every Saturday, but you got a free plot to use throughout the week to plant whatever you wanted.

The history club, too, interested Harry just because it would teach him more about the world he now lived in, so he decided to attend a couple of their meetings as well.

As he wandered around, however, it wasn't just the fair that interested him. While Pokemon had certainly been around him each day, now that they were outside it seemed like nearly every upper year in the school had released every Pokemon they had.

Two redheaded twins, who hovered around the Quidditch booths, were battling against each other with a Minun and Karrablast facing off against a Plusle and Shelmet. They had somehow managed to keep the fight going despite Professor McGonagall chasing after them and demanding them to stop.

The Psychic Club's booth attendants were also twins: two dark haired girls with a Lunatone and Solrock hovering over their heads.

The Slytherin Quidditch Booth's attendant had released a massive bird (a Staraptor, Harry thought) and Feraligator to stand on either side of his booth, dwarfing everyone else around them.

The Gryffindor's attendant had apparently not liked that, and now a flaming bird was doing acrobatics above his own booth while an Ambipom juggled in front of it.

Another booth attendant, a Politics Club member, had let out his Watchog, which was now glaring at anyone who passed by (which was not helping the Club's numbers.)

The attendant of the Pokemon Lovers Club, Marietta, had tried to convince him to sign up with a looming Formantis behind her, and the attendant of the Explorers club had a Drillbur that kept on burrowing under the booth and popping up unexpectedly, turning the earth there into a war zone.

Every few minutes, too, a Loudred would scream and the second it stopped its trainer would shout out an announcement—when he wasn't doing that, he was advertising his ability to do so and asking for $5 if you wanted your own statement shouted out.

Pokemon were everywhere, and unlike in the Great Hall, they weren't just trying to eat.

A Castform floated next to a Jumpluff, and the two of them were circled by a pair of racing Pidgeotto. A group of Cutiefly buzzed by directly in front of his face, and a small brown Pokemon kept scurrying up and down booths and releasing jolts of electricity, disappearing just before its exasperated trainer managed to catch up.

A Tauros and Bouffalant seemed to be sizing each other up at the edge of the fair, and Cedric's own Machop was wrestling with a Tyrogue between the Beauty Club and the Wrestling Club.

Harry, and the rest of the first years, looked on longingly.

He really missed his Pokemon, and being surrounded by other happy ones made the knowledge that his own hadn't been let out in forever all the worse.

After the fair began to wind down, Harry and his fellow Hufflepuffs were instructed to go back to the common room for a meeting.

"Rivers, Oliver!"

"Here!"

"Smith, Zacharias!"

"Yeah."

"Alright, that's everyone." Professor set down the attendance sheet and turned to look around at the twenty students surrounding her. "Now, I know that the rules and expectations have already been set out for you, so we won't bother repeating that, but I just wanted to explain the house cup some more now that you've already had a week of classes.

Each and every one of you have the chance to help us win the house cup, the award given to the best house. Every time you answer a question in class, or help someone out in the hallway, or show inter-house cooperation, or win a battle, you show what an amazing house Hufflepuff is. Now, I know it's been a while since Hufflepuff has won, but that shouldn't stop you from trying—all that shows is that your competition is stiff, and that should just make you work harder.

Now, in order to help you keep working hard, you'll each be placed into teams of two to help each other." She picked up another sheet. "Alright, Hannah and Susan, you're together. Oliver and Roger, you're a team. Leanne and Sally-Anne, have fun. Zacharias and Harry, you're grouped up."

Harry grimaced and glanced at his new partner.

Zacharias, if anything, looked more upset than Harry.

"Wait—what? Why do I have to be with the celebrity?" He snapped. Harry flushed.

"That is enough, Mr. Smith." Professor Sprout said. "You are partners, and that is that." She finished listing out the pairs, and then handed out sheets of items you were 'in charge' of making sure your partner succeeded in—did they have friends? Were they in clubs? Were they practicing battling frequently enough? How were their grades?

Harry was not looking forward to Zacharias deciding whether or not he fit the mold that week. He knew, already, that he wasn't going to be great at school, at least not immediately.

Zacharias wouldn't like that.

Harry's stomach clenched.

Then, he frowned. _No_. No. He would not be bullied again, he would not bow his head and hope it would end. He had friends, now—Terry, who understood him without words, Cedric, who already acted like a big brother to all first years but had made especially sure that Harry settled in OK. Hagrid, whose house stood on school grounds and who had spent all summer making sure he was as happy about it.

He would not bow, not again. He was not alone, and he would not act as if he was.

He would survive.

He would flourish.

And so would his Pokemon.


	15. Harry and the First Fight

It was Tuesday. Every first year, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor alike, milled around the room. A man in a purple turban stood in the front of the class, muttering over a set of books.

The day before Harry had had Training for the first time, but thankfully he had not been made to practice actually battling. Instead he'd been made to practice running Hedwig and Bolt through obstacle courses and practice their moves against dummies so that he had a baseline to compare against. Bolt, he was told, needed to focus a lot more at putting power behind his attacks, while Hedwig had a habit of going for power rather than accuracy, even with moves that she should have had no problem aiming.

So that class hadn't been that bad, and Hedwig and Bolt had both been thrilled to be out of their Apricorns and even more excited about using their attacks, which had kept him in a relatively good mood for the whole day. Terry, who had the class with him, had also helped—his Nosepass Mustache and his Corphish Snickers had less problems than Harry's own, but he'd also been training them for longer and helped Harry after Professor Flitwick had had to move on to the next student.

Harry didn't think this class would be like that.

Terry was there, at least—he moved to stand next to Harry the second he entered the room, and was currently glancing worriedly at the Hufflepuff every few seconds. Unfortunately, Zacharias was too, and unlike in training where he'd placed himself on the opposite end of the room to Harry this time he was standing immediately to Harry's left, with his Eevee, the only Pokemon he regularly had out, standing directly in front of him and subtly growling at Bolt whenever the electric type came too close.

Harry had both of his Pokemon out. He seemed to be one of the only ones. Even Terry only had Mustache released.

Harry hoped there wasn't a rule no one told him about that he could only have one Pokemon out.

The teacher—Professor Quirrell, apparently—finally looked up. It had been five minutes since the bell had rung, but he hadn't even acknowledged the room filling in the entire time Harry had been there.

"H-hello, s-students. I, I am P-professor Quirrell, and it-it is my d-duty and, and honor to rank you s-so that you m-may prog-progress as P-Pokemon t-t-trainers."

Harry winced. Professor Quirrell called the first two people to the stage—a Gryffindor named Hermione and a Slytherin named Draco.

"E-each pair w-will have, have the chance to battle with one P-pokemon, and I w-will score each-each battle." He said. "Y-you may begin."

Draco didn't hesitate, releasing a small fire Pokemon called, Terry whispered, a Litten onto the field. Hermione waited until he released his Pokemon, then released her…

"That's a Fennekin." Terry whispered. "It's weird though; I know that's the only Pokemon she has, so I don't know why she waited."

"Who do you think will win?" Harry whispered back. He winced as the Litten lashed out, but the Fennekin just managed to dodge out of the way and hit the black Pokemon with a flame.

"Oh, almost definitely Draco." Terry said. "I've been asking around—Draco's family has attended this school for centuries, but Hermione's like me: first in her family."

"And that means she'll definitely lose?" Harry asked. That did not make him feel good about his own chances.

"Well, no." Terry said. "But he's almost definitely been professionally trained and she hasn't, so…"

The Litten and Fennekin had continued attacking as they spoke, and while the Fennekin had successfully managed to dodge the first attack, it had done much worse in all of the subsequent ones, and was now clearly limping. Harry was not dealing well with its clear pain, but Bolt was rubbing against his legs and Hedwig looked ready to jump into the battle herself, so he was managing.

"See, look." Terry said. "The Litten's in much better shape, and has managed to hit the Fennekin more—and harder—than the Fennekin can. Not only that, but Hermione has to tell the Fennekin what to do every time. Draco barely has to open his mouth."

The Slytherin boy—Harry had seen him battle before, he realized, in the summer, and he'd won then too— looked as if he was barely paying attention to the battle, actually. Every once in a while he'd seem to snap out a word, too hard for Harry to hear from his distance, but otherwise he seemed quite relaxed, actually, as if there was only one possible outcome and it was the one in his favor.

In pure juxtaposition, the Gryffindor girl—Hermione—was becoming increasingly terrified, and yelping out commands as fast as she could make them, only stopping to take gasping breaths. She jumped up and down, looking at a loss as to what to do.

In seconds it did not matter. Her Fennekin was down.

"N-next w-will be Fay D-dunbar a-and O-oliver, Oliver Rivers." Quirrell said, not even waiting for the Pokemon on the field to be returned.

There were about eighty first years, which meant forty pairs to get through. Each battle took less than five minutes for each battle to occur, but the class was only three hours long. There was no pause between each battle, only a constant stream of Pokemon being released, hurt, and returned, with the only differences being how badly they were hurt and the expression on their trainer's faces.

Terry went up against another Ravenclaw, Padma Patil, and won against her Shuckle.

Zacharias had one of the longest battles against Millicent Bulstrode, but eventually eked out a win against her Snubbull.

The 37th battle finished… the 38th… The 39th… then:

"N-neville L-l-l-longbottom and Harry Potter, p-please come-come forward."

Harry stared at the boy across from him. He looked almost as afraid of what was happening as Harry was.

The Hufflepuff gulped. There was no other word for it. He was terrified, and images of both of his Pokemon whimpering under the weight of limps and cuts and bruises took up so much of his thoughts that he could barely see.

Was this really better than Little Whinging?

Was this truly where he belonged?

"Begin." Professor Quirrell said.

Neville released a Pokemon that Harry did not recognize, one that was completely green and had a leaf sprouting from its head.

Before Harry could speak Hedwig alit from his shoulder, zooming straight at the Pokemon who had just appeared.

The battle had begun.

Hedwig's opponent was larger than her by a noticeable amount, and based on Terry's expression much, much stronger. Harry opened his mouth, and froze.

What was he supposed to say? He barely remembered all of Hedwig's moves, even if there were only four of them, and he had no idea which he was supposed to use.

Oh, right! Flying type moves!

…Hedwig didn't have any flying type moves.

While Harry was still lost in thought Hedwig decided to stop waiting. She flew straight at her opponent and began attacking him—her—it?— indiscriminately.

The other trainer, Neville, yelped "Chikorita! Use… use… use… use Growl!"

Laughter. Why was there laughter?

Harry tried to move his lips. They weren't responding.

The Chikorita faithfully followed their trainer's commands, releasing an odd yelping sound which nonetheless caused Hedwig to temporarily back off. She wasn't swayed for long, however, and began attacking with even more frequency, flapping around the other Pokemon's head and throwing herself towards it from all angles. It was an… odd style of attack, to say, the least, but it seemed to be working.

"No—no, um, use… use Razor Leaf instead!" Neville yelped.

More laughter.

Wait. Was Hedwig winning?

It seemed like it; unlike her opponent she wasn't waiting for Harry to try to make noise before attacking. Instead she seemed to Tackle without pause, focusing more on frequency than force. She was making odd noises, now, too, which was causing Chikorita to squirm back. The Chikorita, meanwhile, had only just now let out her first attack, whirring the leaf on her head around and forcing several others to shoot out nearly too fast to see. They hit Hedwig, but it seemed to barely affect her.

"Um… uh… what were your other moves?" Neville shouted. Harry wondered why he was shouting so much. Few of the other students had—most had just said their orders, and some had even whispered.

"Just—just—I don't know!" Neville wailed. He returned Chikorita, and Professor Quirrell stepped forward, immediately quelling the roaring laughter that had resulted from Neville's actions.

"Th-that's all f-for tod-d-day. P-p-p-please make y-your way t-to lunch."

Harry blinked.

Terry ran up to him, yanking him off the field as the rest of the room began to clear.

"You won! You won!"

"I won?" Harry asked. "I didn't say anything!"

"Neither did Malfoy! Or Greengrass!" Terry grinned. "You still won!"

"Congrats." Zacharias said, coming up to them. "You've somehow managed not to fail, and to paint a giant target on your back."

"What?" Harry and Terry asked.

"Really? Potter's managed to keep mostly under the radar so far, what with being absolutely middling at every class and not trying to talk to anyone much, but he just caused his opponent to give up without saying a word! People are going to try to take you—and your Pokemon— down every chance they get, to prove that they're better than the 'Boy Who Lived'." Zacharias grinned. "Have fun!" The Hufflepuff laughed, then disappeared into the crowd.

"Do… do you think he was serious?" Harry asked.

Terry winced. "Probably? I mean, during the battle people were more focused on Longbottom's mistakes—his Pokemon knows Poison Powder, you know, which would have been very helpful. But Smith's likely right that people are going to want to prove they are better than you, and now that you've seemed to show that you're good enough to battle without words, that's probably going to get them even more competitive."

"I didn't want to do that!" Harry said. "I just froze!"

Terry smiled apologetically. Hedwig, who had been racing around in the air in victory, alit on Harry's shoulder, looking very, very proud of herself.

At least someone was happy.


	16. Harry and the First Month

The next few weeks of Harry's new life passed in a blur.

Memorization class with Professor Snape got almost impossibly more difficult every class as they switched from types to move pools—both natural and trainable. Harry had, in a fit of what must have been insanity, gotten up the courage to ask Professor Snape if Pokemon could learn moves outside of their move pools, and been subjected to a rant that had lasted almost the entirety of the rest of the period, as well as 15 points removed from "the house of the duffers." (He still didn't have an answer, as the rant was entirely about how stupid the question was in the first place.)

Anatomy was at least somewhat more bearable, though the difficulty was about the same—Professor McGonagall was kinder than professor Snape, at least, and Cedric had found him an amazing book on Flying type anatomy in the library so that he could get a jumpstart on his own Pokemon while the class was still going over anatomy common in all Pokemon.

In Survival Harry excelled—the class's goals as well as Professor Sprout's more laid back teaching style assured that, in particular because much of what she taught was things he had to learn firsthand while on the run from Little Whinging.

Harry wasn't doing too bad in Exercise, either; while he was still one of the weakest on the field, the class's non-combative nature as well as his own Pokemon's enjoyment of it assured that he gave every lesson his all, and Professor Kettleburn appeared to appreciate that.

Training with Professor Flitwick was… well, he was very happy his Pokemon didn't need much direction. Zacharias's Eevee wouldn't do a thing without being explicitly told, no matter what the other Hufflepuff said about her natural talent and battle ability, and Harry's own would have been left rudderless if they were the same.

That said, none of his other classes, not the dreadful headache of Anatomy or the constant humiliation of Memorization or the oppressive fear of Training in any way came close to the hatred he developed for Ranking.

The first battle was, as Harry already knew but few others seemed to believe, a fluke.

It didn't matter who he was paired up against after that, the conclusion was foregone before his Pokemon had even decided which one of them was going to battle.

And, to be clear, that wasn't their fault: it was Harry who could not instruct them well enough. Hedwig and Bolt seemed to be natural talents, but when they went against a trainer-led Pokemon then they never quite seemed able to react to the tactics in time, to figure out the right next move against the daunting might of their opponent and the opposing trainer.

They lost.

Badly.

The first time it happened—when Bolt went up against Blaise Zabini's Torchic—Harry had had a panic attack staring at his friend's damaged body. Terry had been forced to return Bolt to his apricorn himself and then physically move Harry to the nurse so that both him and his Pokemon could be checked out.

When not an hour later Bolt leapt into his arms, not a scar in sight, Harry almost had a panic attack all over again from being so surprised.

It didn't make it any easier when the next week Hedwig was put in a similar position by Lisa Turpin's Machop.

And then, of course, there was the problem of everyone _still_ treating him as if he were a star fighter. It didn't matter that he'd lost every match since the first day, or that Neville had too, they decided that his victory over the Gryffindor told them everything they needed to know about his battling talent.

Lisa had almost slapped him when he lost to her, so absolutely certain that he'd lost on purpose and pissed that she couldn't get a 'real battle': "I am a better fighter than Longbottom, and you better treat me like one!" She had shouted. "Even Malfoy knows to respect at least some of his opponents!"

He'd tried to explain that it wasn't a matter of respect, but she hadn't wanted to listen.

So classes, on the whole, were a mix of good and bad. Unfortunately, in Harry's mind the bad seemed to outweigh the good by quite a bit. Spoinkperl was still better than Grogory's, of course, but it was far from the comfortable existence he'd hoped for.

Quidditch, at least, was going well.

"Houser, go—yes, and Mitchell—" Below him the team's Captain, Woodworth, was drilling the chasers. Off to the side the two beaters had each taken out two Pokemon and were now having a go at each other. Harry himself? He was dodging through the mess with Hedwig, trying to catch the Ninjask released at the start of practice.

Harry had not made the main team. He, and his Pokemon, were too weak and short and et cetera and et cetera to have made it to the big leagues so early, but he was the 'apprentice'—the most likely to take after the current Sixth year seeker Franklin, if only because Hedwig' and Bolt's species were historically speaking known for being quite good at it.

This practice, though, Franklin was ill, so Harry had taken his place training with the main team rather than the back-ups.

It... well, it wasn't an experience like any he'd had before. In reserve practices each team practiced separately in the fields off to the side of the stadium. The main team, on the other hand, trained in the stadium itself, with mere feet between each practicing group and himself.

Ahead of him he could just make out the blur of the Ninjask darting between the brawling chasers. Typically speaking, according to what he had been taught, when this happened he was supposed to send his Pokemon after him so long as he believed they were capable of taking a hit or two. Unfortunately, that had not worked all day, so the first year decided it was time to try something else.

Harry whooped at Hedwig to get her attention, gesturing at the grass type to get to the other side of the fighting, before dodging into the chaser's battle himself. There was well over a hundred feet between each battler. He could do this.

It all happened in seconds. Harry had just managed to get past the first battler's Pokemon—Mitchell's Cacturne—when the Grass/Dark type released the move it had been attempting since the start of practice: Energy Ball. Harry knew he had no time to duck, but that was okay—he'd made sure to take a look at the Pokemon's stance before he'd started his run, and if he'd timed it right—

He could feel the power of the green ball as it shot mere inches in front of him, straight at Smith's Vaporeon. Which meant, if he remembered their earlier battling correctly...

Rather than ducking, Harry leapt up in the air. His eyes remained on the Ninjask who itself was attempting to get around the attacking Magneton, who had gotten distracted from its original target and was now focused solely on the tiny bug. Thankfully, any attempt it looked like it would get away Hedwig would appear and force the bug/ghost type to change directions.

As he began to fall he felt a rush of air coming up at him from something, though he didn't have time to look. The Magneton was throwing giant bolts of thunder, but it had been doing that since the start of practice and Harry had caught on to the pattern, a sort of wave like effect that surrounded whatever opponent the Pokemon was trying to target to keep them from leaving.

In order to catch the Ninjask Harry would have to dodge ahead about six feet, stop, and throw the ball in an underhand because the Magneton would always attack the higher target first, so Harry needed to be sure that his throw wasn't its target.

And, of course, he had to make sure the ball hit its own target.

He tensed, aimed, and threw, having just released the orange and white capsule when he heard the captain shout.

"STOP! STOP! STOP!"

The ball hit its target as the rest of the team quickly returned their Pokemon.

The ball fell to the ground, jerking twice, before stopping while they began running straight at him.

More importantly, Harry had done it. For the first time in team practice, he'd managed to capture the Ninjask.

Harry grinned, then yelped as Woodworth grabbed him suddenly and began pulling and prodding him.

"What. The hell. Was that." Captain Woodworth said after he'd checked the first year for any damage. Behind him the three chasers stood, looking incredibly worried, and behind them he could see the two beaters jogging up and looking quite concerned themselves.

"What was what?" Harry asked.

"You ran into the chaser's battle!" Woodworth shouted.

Harry shrank back. "I, I didn't know that was against the rules. Sorry."

"It's not against the rules," Woodworth explained at the same inordinately high volume, "because no one is _stupid_ enough to do it! You could have gotten yourself killed, you know that?!"

Well, now Harry was kind of offended. "I knew what I was doing!" He said.

"Oh, you did, did you?" Woodworth sneered. It looked as if the captain was about to cry, actually. "So those attacks that nearly hit you—I just imagined those, did I?"

"Well, no, but—"

"No buts, Potter! You're benched until you're no longer a danger to yourself or others!" Woodworth snapped, before whipping around and beginning to march away.

"But I caught the Ninjask!" Harry argued.

"You think I care about that?! You think I care about that?!" Woodworth said. He'd turned around again, and was now grasping Harry's uniformed shirt in both hands. He was trembling, Harry realized, and his wet eyes had finally begun to make tracks down his face. "You could have died! You could have died!"

"Woodworth." Emma Houser said quietly.

"He could have died." The captain muttered again, much more quietly. He released Harry. "You could have died, Potter, and that matters a hell of a lot more than any stupid victory."

Harry blinked at him.

His first day on the team, Harry distinctly remembered Woodworth standing before his fully formed team, all twelve of them, and telling them that his sole goal that year—his final year at Spoinkperl—was to win the Quidditch Cup.

Harry had simply made a note in his mind that to Woodworth that was the most important thing, and moved on with his life.

But apparently that wasn't true.

"Why did he care so much?" Harry asked. Houser stared at him.

"Are you kidding me? No, no you're not. Harry, do you even know why Spoinkperl was founded?"

"No."

"Spoinkperl was founded because hundreds of years ago only a select few people were remotely capable of training Pokemon, and because of that the leading cause of death _was_ Pokemon. The founders wanted to make sure that everyone had the chance to learn how to protect themselves and others, so long as they showed enough grit and determination. That's why, to this day, at least one student must be chosen from each area of the region. This school was founded to keep people alive, Harry. Pokemon training started to keep people alive. People devote their lives to keeping others alive, and we call them heroes.

Of course Woodworth doesn't want to see you die, Harry. He, like the rest of us, thinks that life is more valuable than just about anything else in this world, no matter whose life it is. And that doesn't even mention how he's in charge of you, and how you're so long, and just about every other reason he'd want to keep you healthy, happy, and whole."

"Oh."

Houser sighed. "Look, just... just never, ever do that again. Woodworth'll probably calm down in a week or two, so just... I don't know, look up how to keep yourself safe to prove to the captain that you've learned your lesson."

"Yeah, okay." Harry said.

He packed up his quidditch gear, gave the caught Ninjask to one of the beaters, and released Bolt so that he and Hedwig could join Harry in walking back to the door.

That evening, well after the rest of his dormmates had gone to bed and fallen asleep, Harry was still wide awake.

Once, in second grade, Harry and Dudley had been picked for the same side of a football game during recess. Immediately after finding out Harry had been chosen for his team, Dudley had pinned him against the wall and told him to do absolutely everything to make sure they didn't lose.

By the end of the game Harry was bruised, battered, and dizzy, but his team was up by two. Dudley had actually told him he'd done a good job, and left him alone for almost three days afterwards.

Harry had in that way learned a very powerful lesson: if you helped someone get what they wanted, no matter the cost to you, then they would be at least a bit nicer to you then they ever had before. Harry had continued testing this principle over the rest of his time at Little Whinging, and the rule stayed strong.

It simply had not occurred to him that it may be different in the Okoku region.

Harry not dying had not been in any way something Woodworth clearly desired. He hadn't put any visible effort into Harry before today, after all, while he was constantly training and practicing and working to try to ensure the team's future Quidditch victories.

Perhaps it was simply because he felt Harry's survival was a given?

But that didn't really explain _why_ Harry's life was so high on Woodworth's goals. Actually, more accurately, it didn't explain why keeping Harry 'healthy, happy, and whole' was so high.

People cared about others, of course, but in his experience they only cared about those they were close to.

Harry guessed it was different in Okoku; here it was assumed that you'd want as many people as possible healthy, happy, and whole.

He'd have to readjust his outlook, Harry decided. Clearly he could not simply assume that Okoku people would act like Little Whinging people did, and continuing to do so would just mean him making more and more mistakes.


	17. Harry and the Door on the Third Floor

Harry eyed Terry as the other boy's face grew redder and redder. They were in one of the auxiliary Year One training rooms, and Terry was trying to convince his brother's Nosepass (his now, of course, but it wasn't as if the oversized rock had accepted that) to attack a dummy.

Mustache, unlike Terry's Corphish Snickers, was not a particularly easygoing Pokemon, and the Ravenclaw had yet to be able to use the inarguably more powerful Pokemon in battle, which was doing absolute wonders for his rating. (Wonders could be bad as well as good, right?)

Harry's pokemon, on the other hand, seemed to be getting along just fine. Hedwig had disappeared to who-knows-where nearly the second they had arrived, but that was far from unusual for her. Bolt was having a blast attacking nearly every dummy in sight (including, of course, the one that mustache was supposed to be focusing on.)

Harry... Harry was about as enthused as Mustache about being here, but he was (slowly) getting over it.

It was nearly the end of October; he'd had weeks of practice dealing with Pokemon fighting already, and he was getting better and better at focusing on his Pokemon's enjoyment rather than the clear injuries every participant sported after each battle.

He still wasn't happy about it, and he certainly didn't like it, but at least he'd stopped associating it with being beaten up by Dudley. His new plan—or more accurately Terry's new plan for Harry—was to slowly begin actually giving his Pokemon orders.

That was going less well.

"C'mon!" Harry's eyes, which had been focused on Bolt literally using the dummies scattered about the room to play a fast paced game of 'the floor is lava', snapped to Terry.

Mustache had apparently decided to take a nap.

"Alright," the Ravenclaw finally sighed, "I'm done for the day. Want to go try to filch some snacks from the kitchens instead?"

Harry grinned. "I'll never turn down food." He said. Terry returned his Pokemon, Harry called his back to him, and off they went to try to get something sweet.

It didn't take long, however, for them to slow to a stop.

"—Massive!" A voice said from the next hallway. "I'll bet," the same voice continued, "that it's a test. I mean, if we can defeat that then we'll be automatic graduates for sure! But would Dumbledore do that? Of course he would! Eh, it doesn't matter anyway. It'll be a blast to figure out how to defeat it regardless of whether or not its condoned. Too right, brother! Too right!"

Terry and Harry eyed each other, then slowly crept forward.

"Ooh, what do we have here?" A voice, suddenly right in front of them, asked.

Harry blinked up at two redheaded clones: the Weasley twins.

Harry did not like the Weasley twins.

This was not good.

"It looks like we found ourselves a couple of eavesdropping firsties!" The other twin replied to his brother.

"What were you talking about?" Terry asked, far more bravely than Harry would have dared.

"Oh, nothing." The first twin said. The second was about to add something to that when he looked behind the first years and paled.

"Run!"

The two whipped around and vanished down the hallway, Harry, Bolt, Hedwig, and Terry fast on their heels because, as it turned out, the twins had not run away from the caretaker Filch or a professor or anything like that.

No, they were getting out of the way of a giant mass of Zubat.

Spoinkperl, the first years quickly learned, was not exactly a well-sealed school. All sorts of pokemon, the vast majority of them quite young and weak, would go in and out of the castle as if it were no different than the surrounding woods.

Headmaster Dumbledore had apparently installed a series of defenses to keep the more powerful Pokemon away, but did nothing about those that were too weak to be a challenge even to the youngest students.

So every winter the castle was overrun by just about every Pokemon in the surrounding land that considered themselves too weak to risk living outside.

Mostly that was annoying, but fine. So long as one got used to a Caterpie or two chewing on your blankets if you didn't remember to close the dorm door, it really didn't affect the students' day to day.

There was one exception to this.

Zubat.

There were just so many of them—it didn't matter that they couldn't really damage anyone, it was still a horrible sensation to be caught up in one of their clouds, to be bit and pricked and slapped with weak wings. It was easy enough with any Pokemon, even the weakest, to force oneself out of the cloud, but it was never a pleasant experience and having to do so once was enough, never mind many times a day.

So, of course, the second anyone saw the Zubat coming toward them they (and anyone who saw them) began sprinting in the opposite direction, no matter where that hallway went.

The group of first-years, third-years, and Pokemon took two sharp rights, then a sharp left, then stampeded up a set of stairs before sprinting down the first hallway they saw. Unfortunately the cloud had caught sight of them, and all of them could hear the flurry of wings chasing after them.

"C'mon!" One of the twins screamed, yanking himself up another staircase. Harry, well out of breath, didn't hesitate to follow. Behind him Bolt growled at the nearing horde, but unfortunately he'd never quite got around teaching his first partner any electric moves, so there was little it could do to deter the cloud (and even then it rarely worked.)

"Open the door! Open the door!" The twin who was further back screamed. The one in front did as he was told, yanking open the door that stood at the top of the stairs.

And then everything paused.

(Well, Harry didn't—he needed air far to much to do so—but everyone stopped running and the Zubat seemed to hover in place as well.)

Harry looked up. The door, it appeared, led to a room which held a Pokemon.

A very large Pokemon.

A very large Pokemon which, thanks to Harry's near constant effort not to fail Professor Snape's class, Harry recognized.

"Is—is that a Zweilous?" He whispered. He barely noticed the Zubat behind him turning to flee.

"Nearly evolved, too." One of the twins said as he wrenched the door shut. "And _that_ was what we were talking about earlier."

"Arceus." Terry breathed. "That was... massive."

"Near as we can figure," a twin explained, "given that it's already got its third head growing beneath its skin—you can see the bump—its at least level 60, going off of the Ranking system."

"Don't—don't you only need one Pokemon at level 50 to _graduate_ Spoinkperl?"

"That's why we think it's a test. You beat it, you're done with school forever."

The other twin glared at his brother. "That's what _Gred_ thinks. I think different." Then he grinned. "Not that it matters—even if its not meant to be a test, we can still use it as one."

"Well, I'm staying well away." Terry said. He grabbed Harry's arm. "C'mon, Harry. No reason to court trouble."

"Wimps!" Gred called out.

Neither first year turned around until they were well out of sight.

"That was a Zweilous." Harry said. "In this school. A Zweilous. Who could decimate me and my friends without even trying."

"Yep." Terry said. "And I'm not poking _that_ with a ten foot Exeggutor."

"Aren't you supposed to be in the house of the curious?" Harry asked. He checked his Pokemon over from injuries from the Zubat, but thankfully they seemed to have evaded the horde entirely.

"Well, sure, but I'm not in the house of the _stupid_." Terry said. "Whatever reason there is for a Zweilous to be in that room will not like being poked, any more than the Zweilous would itself. Anyway, we never managed to get to the kitchens, did we? Let's go now." He began walking down the corridor before Harry even had the chance to protest.

Harry glanced back at the staircase that the Gryffindor twins were only now beginning to descend.

He supposed Terry was right, but then...

In Little Whinging Pokemon in general had been that kind of taboo, and 'poking it' had worked out very well for Harry, so some part of him still felt like...

Poking.

But Terry was right, Harry firmly reiterated to himself. His life was finally looking good. There was no reason to try to poke anything.


	18. Harry and the First Match

If you have any questions/comments/concerns/ideas put them in a review and I'll try to answer/read/explain/incorporate them.

Thanks to my beta writer Articuno13.

* * *

Harry grimaced, rubbing his eyes as he desperately tried to keep pace with Professor Binns. He, as well as nearly all of the Gryffindors, most Hufflepuffs, and some of the Slytherin first years, were in the middle of a contest.

Nymphadora Tonks was a seventh year Hufflepuff who was well known amongst the older students for having some of the best notes out of anybody. As it turned out, most seventh years spent their final year of school selling their old notes to whomever would pay most, so of course she was in high demand.

Apparently, however, nearly two months of non-stop pestering had been too much for the poor woman. So instead she'd decided to do something unusual: hold a competition.

Binns the Porygon was a fairly old Porygon who had had the memories of the Anatomy professor prior to Professor McGonagall.

He was also dead boring.

Binns' dying wish, apparently, was for his Porygon to continue to teach in his "absence", so the headmaster had set him up in his very own room and all students were notified at the beginning year of the "bonus classes" they should feel free to take. Given that the Porygon spoke in a long, dead monotone that seemed to make the time around it slow down, and that the _only_ anatomy he ever spoke of was the Meowth line, the classes were not very well attended.

Tonks' competition was to stick everybody in the same room into the room and offer her notes for that year to whoever lasted the longest without missing any of the dead man's words.

"Four hours!" A voice (Ernie's?) shouted. "Four hours wasted! On a Saturday!"

"And we're down to two." An announcer from the Gryffindor house said to the applause of the watching crowd. "In the red and gold tie we have Hermione Granger, the first Pokemon trainer in her family and the current top-of-class. And in the black and yellow we have Harry Potter, the Boy. Who. Lived!"

More cheering.

Harry's fame apparently worked to his benefit in gaining support for this event, which was... well, if it had to have any effect at all he'd have preferred it to be more useful, but at least it wasn't the glares and yelling that he got for "cheating" his peers out of battles during Ranking.

Right now, however, he was tired, and Porygon Binns was going and going and going and going and...

But! He needed the notes. Unlike Hermione he certainly wasn't top of class, and he really needed the help to continue even squeaking by in class, and he really wanted to do better than that.

He glanced up at the red and blue Pokemon, scribbling something down about the average ear-height of Meowth at 12 months of age. If it really had been four hours, Harry was surprised. It felt like much longer. Honestly, he had no idea how he'd managed to last as long as he'd had already, and the fact that someone else had too... well. Harry would never, ever, think poorly of Hermione's abilities, but then she was already top of class so it wasn't as if he didn't respect her already.

Now if only she would give up.

Like, at this very moment.

Please.

...

It took nearly three more hours, Harry was told, before he was finally declared the winner. Tonks (her first name was apparently off limits) happily gave him the notes (Puff Pride!) and his year mates dragged him off to celebrate in the common room. He did manage to shake Hermione's hand before he left—good sportsmanship was definitely something he wanted to practice—but upon seeing exactly how upset the Gryffs were at his victory he made himself scarce.

School, otherwise, continued as normal.

His scores in Anatomy were steadily improving, though it would take a while until most of what he memorized made sense to him. Survival and Exercise, as always, were classes he tended to excel in, while Training and Ranking, as always, were classes that he'd rather not have had to take at all.

And then there was Memorization.

Memorization, Harry felt, was a misnomer. Yes, they were meant to memorize all the types, and conditions, and Pokemon, and abilities, and et cetera, but it reminded him more of math than anything else.

One problem, for instance, went "Given a level 10 Watchog with standard training and a level 10 Lillipup who has been paralyzed, and accounting for the expected variances with attacks, if both only use the attack Tackle which one is more likely to faint first, and by what odds?"

For that question Harry had had to look into the average stats for a Watchog and Lillipup, as well as the Tackle move, and then take into account the effect of the paralysis, all the while listening to all the other 'Puffs moan and groan about how "it doesn't even work like this! Dumbledore himself proved that all these numbers were just estimates, and only barely more likely to be right than wrong!"

"And anyway," another of Harry's dormmates would interject, "it's not as if any of us measure our Pokemon's levels or anything after we graduate, and it's not like we'd tell our opponent even if we did, so what's the use of knowing all this?"

Terry was much more amenable to the entire class.

"No one else seems to like it either!" Harry whined as the two boys began preparing for their hour in the training room. "Professor Snape hates me, and anyway everyone agrees that the class is pointless!"

"It's not, really." Terry said. "I mean, yeah, it's not like your going to go through the problems ever again after we graduate, I'm not going to lie about that, but the whole point of that part of the class is so that you have a general idea of how many hits any given Pokemon to take and how powerful this or that attack is compared to another one. Things like that."

"I don't really see how that's any easier." Harry huffed. "Do you know how long it takes to find everything each problem needs to know and double check that you haven't forgotten anything when Professor Snape is looming behind you and telling you that you should really just guess because you're so stupid you're more likely to get the answer right that way than by doing the actual work.

"Snape is... Snape." Terry said. "That's a different problem. Anyway, that's just how the other Ravenclaws explained the class to me."

"Well, I still think it's stupid." Harry said.

"Your opinion." Terry conceded, before changing the topic to how he'd finally got his Nosepass Mustache to acknowledge his order (not actually comply with it, of course, but at least recognize that Terry had given an order.)

The end of October brought Halloween preparations. Halloween, a previously unheard of holiday for Harry, was a _big_ holiday in greater Okoku. The reasons for this, apparently, were too long to list:

"It's the end of the war!" Was the most common answer, but other favorites included "Why wouldn't you want to dress up like a Pokemon? Um, not that I do that, of course. Too old. I mean when you're younger." Terry, when asked, gave a long rambling answer about the historical significance of the holiday (which Harry had mostly tuned out), while Zacharias had simply said any _true_ Okoku citizen should already know why the holiday was important.

Regardless, the event was big, so in the week leading up to it all free time was devoted to preparing the castle for the giant feast which would take place that evening.

Harry was actually, shockingly, a part of the preparation. All of the Quidditch players were getting ready for the first game which would take place on the very day. Neither of the teams were Hufflepuff—it was Ravenclaw vs Gryffindor—but both the Slytherin and Hufflepuff teams wanted to make sure they were keeping pace and this was the first measuring stick they would really get.

Zacharias, meanwhile, had apparently made it his goal to convince Harry to drop out.

It wouldn't work, of course, but he didn't know that.

"Is this really your best effort?" Zacharias sneered, examining the anatomy homework he'd snatched out of Harry's hands.

"Yes?" Harry said. "What did I do wrong?"

"Where should I even begin?" Zacharias moaned.

"At the beginning?" Harry suggested.

"Honestly, this is so horrible that if it were mine I would just have my Eevee tear it apart and start again. Really, Potter, I know you're planning on coasting on your fame but you should really put at least as much effort into these as you do in _shitting_."

Harry's homework got an Acceptable.

Despite Zacharias's best efforts, therefore, Harry was still a student when Halloween arrived.

"You're sitting with me today, okay?" Cedric said, grabbing Harry's arm as the Hufflepuff house made their way to the Quidditch stands.

"Okay." Harry said. "Why?"

"Well, I've got to teach you how to analyze the other seeker, don't I?" Cedric laughed. They pushed their way up the stairs, stumbling through a short tunnel to arrive at the bleachers and get their first sight of the field. The quidditch pitch was...

Honestly, it reminded Harry most of an overly large and complex jungle gym.

In practice the 'Puffs had mostly just relied on open fields and the like, though at times they'd be lucky enough to win the lottery and get to practice in the field that was set up as a much, much smaller example of what was apparently the game's pitch.

It was mostly built out of black pipes that connected every few feet at right levels, creating a massive 3D grid. About four 'sections' of the grid on all sides were left mostly bare—there were clearly ladders there (a clear example of why Harry had had to race up and down a series of them as part of his training) but otherwise the platforms were left mostly bare. In the middle of the grid two massive platforms, one on either side, were raised to different heights and the air above them was left clear. That, Harry knew, was where the doubles and triple rotation battles would mostly occur, although technically speaking they were allowed to move around the entire pitch as they wished.

The keeper platforms, tiny half-a-meter ledges that jutted out between both of their larger battle counterparts, were designed so that the keeper could see both fights simultaneously—it was, after all, not just the keeper's job to decide when the triple battles rotated. Keepers were also meant to take control of the entire field—Cedric had told Harry about famous battles where, when the triple battle wasn't going well, one keeper had ordered his doubles team to move to the other platform and prevent the triples from continuing to battle without risking hitting a doubles Pokemon and losing points. The keeper platforms were also directly across from each other, so each could see the other and attempt to counter the other's orders as they were called.

"Wow." Harry said.

"Yeah. A bit different than practice, right?" Cedric laughed. "Okay, so first rule: seekers are not allowed to put more than one foot on any platform. Keeps any _incidents_ like you-know-what happening during a game, you know?" Harry flushed. "The second most important thing to know about being a seeker is that it constantly feels like a losing game. The first time you get on the field they're going to release the Snitch, it's going to disappear, and you're going to wonder how the hell you're going to find it. And in about half of all games the snitch is never found because all the Pokemon of one team are defeated first."

"I've been catching at least one snitch in most practices!" Harry protested. Cedric laughed.

"Well, yeah, but that's on a flat surface with a Ninjask whose been trained not to go up so high. The main reason you're trying to catch the Snitch at all given how unlike actual games it is is just to get you used to the general idea. Mind, you are pretty good at it considering how scrawny and young you are—soon Woodworth's probably going to point you to practicing aiming from further away and exercising more, rather than just getting used to chasing all practice."

"Oh." Harry said.

Cedric smiled. "Again, it's not like you're—" a cough rang out across the stadium.

Then another. Then—"Hello Spoinkers! It's your favorite new announcer, Lee Jordan, here to help you cheer on Gryffindor as they dominate over the 'Claws!" A yelp. "Yes, right, okay, Anyway, up first we have the Ravenclaw team! Let me introduce..."

As Lee rattled off the teams' names to the student body's cheering Cedric pointed out Madame Hooch walking out into the field with a single Pokeball in her grasp.

"...Is everybody ready?!" Loud cheering. "I _said,_ is everybody ready?!" Even louder cheering. "Then let's begin. If you would, Madame Hooch."

The woman stopped in the middle of the field on the ground. Already the double and triples players as well as the keeper had made their way to their respective platforms, so all that was left was the freeing of the Ninjask.

'Three..." Madame Hooch began. "Two... One..." She released the Snitch. The Gryffindor seeker, a fourth year who Harry didn't recognize, tossed a ball immediately but it missed by a mile and he and his Monferno immediately took off, with the fifth year Ravenclaw and her Misdreavus right behind them.

They scrambled up and down vertical pipes, sometimes using ladders and other times simply relying on their speed and their shoes' grip to make it up. They sprinted across the field, balancing on the rail-thin pipes and occasionally having to grab onto the pipe above or in front of them to keep from falling. Their Pokemon, too, raced around the field, trying to get the Ninjask to fly away from the opposing seeker and towards their own.

Most of the time the Snitch was out of reach, and even out of sight, of all players, Pokemon, announcers, and audience members. The next most frequent scenario was the poor Ninjask finding itself caught between the Monferno and the Misdreavus, flitting this way and that as it tried to dart around either of the other Pokemon.

Harry had screamed himself hoarse within the first half hour.

It was not all cheering, however: Cedric made sure to point out everything he thought the seekers were doing right or wrong to Harry—

"See what the Gryffindor did? That was stupid—the Ninjask was close enough that he could have at least tried a throw but because he wanted to get up another level he lost his chance." He'd explain what minute. The next he'd tap Harry on his shoulder—"ooh—that was a good move on the Ravenclaw's part; it looks like she told her Pokemon to work in conjunction with the Monferno and then just moved to the Gryffindor's position. That's not always the best idea—gives the other more chances for capture too, you know, but David's got pretty bad aim."

"Why is he the Gryffindor seeker then?" Harry asked.

Cedric snorted. "Didn't have many options, did they? Mind, their triples and doubles teams are fantastic—I give it max fifteen more minutes until the game's over—but they haven't had a good seeker since Charlie, and they don't field a reserve team to build up."

"Why not?" Harry asked.

Cedric shrugged. "How should I know? They're Gryffs, they do stupid things sometimes."

Harry frowned. There really wasn't a reason? He didn't like that—knowing the reason people did things, even if he didn't agree with it, was always a good idea.

True to Cedric's guess, the battle only lasted ten minutes until the last of the Ravenclaw battle Pokemon—a doubles player's Exeggcute—went down and the game was officially a win for the Gryffindors.

The Snitch still zipped around freely, and continued to do so until Madame Hooch gave a sharp whistle and pointed to the Pokeball it had initially come out of.

"That was fun." Harry said. "I didn't really like the battles, but watching for the Snitch was exciting."

"You're weird." Wayne said, appearing beside Harry as they trooped out of the stadium. "The Snitch is boring unless you get really good players—it's the battling that's fun."

Harry shrugged. "I liked it."

"Which is why I called you weird." Wayne reiterated. "Anyway, you ready for the feast?"

"It's going to be my first." Harry said. "I'm looking forward to trying all the food."

"Save room for dessert." Wayne warned. "That's the best part."

Harry grinned, and both boys (as well as the rest of the Hogwarts student population) took off towards the Great Hall.


End file.
